Curse of the Lost Isle Special Edition

by Vijaya Schartz

When a squire offered to take Sigefroi’s reins, he dismounted and let go of his horse. He rolled the scroll from the pope and handed it to Otto.

  The emperor took the message. “Learned from the best, hey?” He grinned. “That would be me, would it not?” He pushed back the mail hauberk, letting lose a full head of blond curls. “But I’m giving you the best trained and best equipped cavalry in all Christendom. As I always say, heavy cavalry, when properly handled, is superior to any other military force known to this day!”

  Sigefroi laughed. “Aye, sire. Trample them with horses, and they’ll flee or die underfoot.”

  Otto slapped Sigefroi on the shoulder. “Do not forget speed, flawless discipline, and the element of surprise.”

  All around them the camp organized itself. The imperial tent was raised, and soon cooking fires spread the smell of meat stew. The dogs waited expectantly for scraps of food.

  As darkness fell, a dozen privileged knights gathered around the campfire in front of Otto’s tent to listen to their liege. With blood lust gleaming in his eyes, the emperor spoke ardently of the great battle fought just south of there, eleven years earlier, on the Lechfeld River.

  Sigefroi remembered the place and the battle well. He was very young then. In the heat of summer, eight thousand horsemen from eight different kingdoms and duchies, including the Czechs from Bohemia, had descended on the Hungarians who had crossed the southern borders and besieged the town of Augsburg.

  Otto’s green eyes shone as he relived the battle and smiled as he described in details the capture and the interrogation of the Hungarian king. “And his face dripping blood, we finally dangled him on a rope from the town’s postern gate, and the crows and ravens picked his empty eye sockets for days, in the stink of the decomposing carcasses of slaughtered men and horses lying outside the walls on the battlefield. These were the days...”

  The knights laughed.

  Sigefroi remained silent. He knew how men could get carried away in the heat of battle. Many friends had perished in that war as well, among them the Frankish king. While the troops of Lorraine had remained behind to guard the Rhine River, Sigefroi had followed Otto into battle. It had been a great adventure, a glorious victory forever imprinted on his young mind.

  In the flickering light of the flames, Sigefroi met Thierry’s gaze. The young knight’s smile of approval looked forced, and Sigefroi understood Thierry’s reservations. He reminded Sigefroi of his own youth. Given time, the lad would make a valorous knight.

  Next to Thierry, Otto Junior nodded and stared at his father with unmasked admiration, obviously fascinated by the tales of such heroic feats. Sigefroi wondered what kind of emperor he would become. Would he have his father’s political skills and cunning? Would he lead wisely or follow his passions? Under his rule, would the empire flourish or die?

  * * *

  Two days after crossing the Danube, the imperial army came to a fork in the road and Sigefroi parted ways with the emperor. While Otto followed the wide road south toward Rome with his son and fifty knights, Sigefroi led the rest of the riders along rough mountain trails, heading southeast through Bavaria toward the Byzantine border.

  Riding at his side, Gunter laughed, retelling past conquests, while Thierry’s eyes widened with admiration. Sigefroi enjoyed the journey. It felt good to be on the road again, alive and free, among friends, and eager for battle.

  The weather remained clement as they crossed the Eastern tail of the Alps. The mounted warriors lived on goat cheese and mutton foraged from local shepherds. Within days the sky became bluer and the land drier as they moved further southeast. The dense forests soon gave way to olive groves, vineyards, dry mud dwellings, and red dirt. The fine dust of the trail filtered through the mail and inside boots and garments.

  The imperial cavalry encountered no army, no soldiers, no resistance as they depleted the larders of several abbeys and purchased wine and food from local landlords loyal to the empire. Everywhere gentle folk went about their daily chores.

  As they crossed a small town, Thierry remarked, “The population looks peaceful. I see no sign of revolt.”

  Gunter grunted. “Looks are deceiving.”

  Sigefroi nodded agreement. “For the past two days, the peasants on the road stare at us with disdain and pride.”

  Gunter spit to the side of his horse. “The farther south we get, pride will turn to contempt.”

  Sigefroi rode slowly along the road crossing the town, followed by his imposing cavalry.

  The eyes glaring at them were slightly almond-shaped above high cheek bones, and the locals’ skin took deeper shades of bronze. The barbarians from the east, who had precipitated the fall of Rome centuries earlier, had mixed with the Greek population to produce a vindictive breed of warring peasants.

  From then on, Sigefroi kept the bulk of his cavalry to the countryside, sending only food forays to the villages and towns. But the forests grew scarce and the trees too far apart to hide his troops. In order to water the horses he had to keep close to the few rivers. It made his camp easy to spot and vulnerable, but peasants would have to be harebrained to attack the best trained cavalry in the civilized world.

  Sigefroi slowed his horse as he passed a decomposing cadaver covered with red ants on the side of the path. The stink also attracted vultures who circled overhead. “We are not far from the border.”

  Farther south, an arrow had split a sapling, a broken sword lay in the dust of the road, a tattered pennant fluttered high in the branches of a cedar tree. In a field, a peasant hammered a broken shield into a plow blade.

  That night, Sigefroi made camp by the river. For a change, the supply team had found a large friendly village willing to provide abundant food and wine. They seemed relieved to see imperial troops and said they appreciated the soldiers’ protection from border raids. They were willing to give up their prepared summer feast in exchange for a handful of gold coins.

  The men celebrated with banquet food and barrels of wine, but Sigefroi worried about the darkness. There would be no moon tonight, and the border was only a few miles away. No doubt the enemy had spies and knew of his movements.

  So, Sigefroi posted twice as many sentries as usual along the perimeter of the camp, just in case. Then he went to sleep to the songs of cicadas, under a summer sky full of stars. A warrior needed no tent in such balmy weather.

  * * *

  What woke him in the middle of the night must have been the silence. The cicadas and night birds had stopped chirping. Sigefroi at first thought he was still dreaming. His eyes and mind refused to focus.

  Among the sleeping men glided furtive shadows, light as children, like thieves in the night. But their hands held curved daggers, and under the faint starlight the blades dripped dark blood. The murderous shadows ran noiselessly in every direction, like wraiths on the wind.

  Sigefroi closed his hand on Caliburn’s hilt and rose on unsteady feet. He drew the sword and yelled his battle roar, but it came muffled to his ears. Thunder rumbled inside his skull. His guts churned with unholy fire. How much wine had he gulped last night? No more than usual. Yet, his arm barely had the strength to lift a sword.

  Was the food poisoned? The wine drugged? The sudden realization that his camp was under attack from a stealthy enemy made him yell louder.

  Other knights responded with sluggish battle cries of their own, and soon the clink of drawing swords echoed into the night as the soldiers emerged from their stupor.

  Sigefroi stumbled after one of the aggressors, but his wobbly legs couldn’t run fast enough to catch the intruder who seemed to fly like a spirit.

  “To the horses! Catch the bastards!” His head pounded as if crushed by the blows of a giant hammer.

  But only a few horses remained. Sigefroi seized a frightened destrier by the mane and clumsily heaved himself upon its bare back. Raw lightning coursed in his veins. He could barely control his body, and the thought that he had been poisoned enraged him.

  He galloped afte
r fleeing shadows, some on horseback. His own horses, stolen by thieves! When a cloud veiled the stars, he lost sight of them as they vanished into darkness.

  Turning his mount, Sigefroi returned to camp, where the soldiers who could still stand and walk had revived the fires and lit the torches. Ignoring the fire in his gut, he dismounted to inspect the damages. Many knights sat, heaving last night’s food in obvious agony. The dogs lay dead, green foam on their fangs. The poison had killed them first. The remaining men would surely die next.

  Sigefroi closed his mind to the twisting knots in his stomach. He realized with horror that most knights had not risen from their sleep. A few slumped, face down in a pile of vomit. Others lay on their backs, immobile, eyes and mouths wide open, in a pool of blood. Their slit throats gaped at the stars.

  Gunter, deathly pale, rushed to Sigefroi. “Over two hundred dead, my lord. Some poisoned, others slaughtered like rabbits in their sleep, without a chance to fight back. Those still alive are deathly sick. Few can stand, even less ride.”

  From the expression on his friend’s face, Sigefroi realized something worse had happened. “Gunter, what is it?”

  “It’s Thierry!” The big man’s face twitched. “This way... see for yourself.”

  By the light of a torch, two paces to the right, Thierry lay on a blood-soaked blanket, his neck gushing crimson under a ghostly face. His eyes opened wide as if he recognized his lord.

  Sigefroi fell on his knees besides Thierry. No, not that innocent soul. It was not fair. “I’m here, lad.”

  Thierry’s lips formed a word with no sound. Alyx! In his last agony he was calling his love, the mother of his unborn child. Then his face relaxed, and his clear blue eyes fixed on something beyond the black sky as he remained perfectly still.

  A tear of frustration rolled down his cheek but Sigefroi let it drop as he raised his hand to close Thierry’s eyes forever. Dipping his thumb in the boy’s fresh blood Sigefroi drew a cross with it on his own forehead. “Your death will be avenged, my friend.”

  “How dare the bastards kill Thierry?” Gunter spit on the ground then he turned away, kicked a dead dog and sent it flying several paces.

  A sudden calm seized Sigefroi. The spot in his chest where his heart used to beat turned to a block of ice. “Gather the horses. Take the torches. We are going to teach these peasants not to trifle with imperial knights.”

  Within moments, every able horseman had saddled up and now moved upriver, like an ominous ribbon of torch fire in the night, toward the village that had provided the tainted food. Behind them, horseless riders whistled in hopes of retrieving their mounts, stolen or let loose in the wilderness.

  At the head of his troops, Sigefroi seethed. He’d lost two hundred men and might lose a thousand or more in the next few hours, but his guilt focused on that innocent soul he had taken under his tutelage. Thierry, his former squire, a young man he had taught from childhood, and who had become his friend.

  How could he ever break the news to Melusine? And to Lady Alyx?

  The blood rushing through his temples rumbled like a war drum. Was he dying, too? Would they all expire in horrible pain? Fueled by guilt, shame, and revenge, Gunter on his heels, Sigefroi yelled as he rode ahead on his destrier.

  Ignoring the stabs of wrenching pain in his gut, he focused on the anger and the frustration of the men who followed him, and he drew strength from it. He would show these insolent traitors the cost of angering him.

  When Sigefroi and his men reached the village, it stood empty. The riders touched the torches to the straw roofs and filthy hide curtains serving as doors, then they threw the torches inside the dry mud homes. Several villagers ran for the river, trying to reach their boats.

  Sigefroi cut off their retreat and drove them back. “Burn the boats. Let no one escape!”

  The horsemen spread out through the countryside and rounded up men, women, and children who had fled their homes at the first sounds of approaching horses. The soldiers dragged them back screaming with wide, frightened eyes.

  A woman produced a knife from under her skirt and threw it at Sigefroi’s head. In the split second as he ducked, Sigefroi recognized the dagger. It was Thierry’s, a present from Melusine. With one stroke of Caliburn, he decapitated the culprit. A man rushed him with a spear but fell from a knight’s arrow.

  The warriors gathered the murdering villagers on the muddy river bank. The prisoners had not expected the soldiers to be able to fight after ingesting the poison. Now they pleaded with their aggressors. Kneeling in surrender amidst the dust and the smoke, they cried and sobbed, begging for mercy.

  By the ominous glow of the burning village, Gunter, his red face covered with sweat and grime, rode toward Sigefroi. “We found many of our horses penned behind the hillock. What should we do with the prisoners?”

  Sigefroi wanted to say kill them all, but these were women and children, not warriors, and as a knight he was bound by honor to let them live. Still, he would not let them get away with slaughtering his men.

  They had killed Thierry. Hell and damnation, all his warriors might be dying from their poisoned food or wine. Sigefroi himself might not survive the night. He must instill fear in the other villages to prevent them from striking again in the future. “Make an example, but let them live to tell their tale!”

  “Aye! So, what do we do?”

  Sigefroi could feel the impatience in Gunter and in the men. The horses pranced, as if feeling the tension in the air.

  “Cut off their right hands like the horse thieves they are. And also their ears and noses, so they remember never to plot against the empire.”

  Gunter frowned. “All of them?”

  “Aye.” Sigefroi surveyed the many faces staring at him. “Do not let their innocent airs fool you. These underhanded foes killed your friends. We may all be dead in a few hours from their cowardly poison. They wielded the blades that slit our valorous knights’ throats!”

  A cry rose from a few horsemen who recognized the prisoners as the very assassins who had slaughtered their friends.

  “Obey your orders,” Sigefroi shouted. “And if they resist or try to run, kill them without a thought. They deserve no mercy.”

  The knights uttered their battle cries and broke the circle as they advanced upon the prisoners. A woman screamed. She grabbed two children and pressed their heads to her chest. A male prisoner started to run and even reached the river, but a knight rode after him, splashing into the water and hacked him open from shoulder to midriff. Children sobbed, old men stared. From a burning abode came a newborn’s cry.

  But Sigefroi could not forgive. Clenching his stomach against the pain rending his gut, he yelled his battle roar, rode forth, and sliced off a woman’s hand. She screamed and raised her bloody stump to her head. Sigefroi then dismounted, and in one easy stroke sliced off her nose then hacked off her ear before she crumpled to the slippery ground. In his frenzy, he still marveled at the sharpness and precision of the miraculous sword.

  Pushing aside all feelings, Sigefroi systematically picked one trembling victim after another and sliced off ears, noses and hands. Soon he couldn’t remember what he was doing or why, but he kept hacking and slicing. Blood splashed his surcoat and stained Caliburn. Red rivulets ran across the mud and swirled into the river.

  By the time the pink sun rose on the eastern horizon, there was nothing left of the proud village. Only a few bloody cripples whimpered as they crawled among fresh corpses on a crimson river bank, by a pile of smoking ruins.

  While the knights gathered the stolen horses, Sigefroi slumped against a tree and heaved his gut. The pain of it mixed with the shame and disgust of what he had just done.

  With the taste of bile, his revulsion for the bloody massacre grew as his head slowly cleared, and he realized he might survive the poison after all. But would God ever forgive him for what he had done this night? Suddenly, Melusine’s face filled his mind and he began to sob.

  * * *

&nbs
p; Melusine awoke in the middle of a familiar nightmare she thought long forgotten. A river of blood flowed at the hand of Sigefroi wielding Caliburn. The sight of her beloved husband killing and maiming women and children by the glow of a burning village left Melusine shuddering with repugnance.

  What had brought about the hated vision? The fact that Sigefroi had gone to war again? Had it happened? Would it happen? No. She shouldn’t be so quick to accuse him of such horrible deeds.

  Melusine wished she could link her mind to Sigefroi’s, but she had tried before and never could. She hadn’t heard from him since he’d left for the war, and although she showed a brave front at the castle, alone in their chambers she missed him sorely. She knew Caliburn would protect his life, but war could be messy in more subtle ways.

  When the first rooster crowed, Melusine pushed back the woolly blanket and rose from the bed. She opened the wood shutters to gaze through the window of the keep and shivered at the cool morning. Nestled on the hillside by the river, the town of Saarburg still slept. The moonless night now paled in the eastern sky.

  Soon the rising sun would banish the nightmare that probably sprouted from unfounded fears. Sigefroi was many things, but not a cruel torturer of women and children. She knew him to be loyal and fair, harsh sometimes, but kinder than most, and always honorable.

  She refreshed her face and hands with the cool water of the basin, refusing to look straight into it, for fear the dreaded vision would return. She dressed in a simple gown, intending to break her fast in the kitchen with the servants. They respected her for sharing the morning gruel with them rather than playing the haughty chatelaine. And after decades of solitude, Melusine enjoyed the company of her people.

  As she crossed the bailey on her way to the kitchen, the guards extinguished the torches and hoisted the gate. The first villagers entered the castle walls, pushing hand carts full of victuals or walking a loaded donkey. At the sight of a rider galloping among them, Melusine’s heart raced. A messenger. He didn’t look like a soldier from Otto’s army, however, but wore the surcoat of a man of the Church.