Chivalry

by Gavin G. Smith

  Then Jonathan the Bastard was waving at him as he, Cotter and the light of the blue sky became smaller and more distant. At least it was a soft landing. He slid down a mountain of rotting corpses, coming to rest next to the body of a large Harlanian soldier. It looked as if the solder’s chest had been staved in with an axe, his ribs splintered. A rat crawled in the cavity searching for glistening red treats. Once this would have sickened Thornto, now it seemed an inevitable part of how his day was turning out. The rat turned to look at him. Thornto waited to die. He was surprised that he’d hung on this long. He looked for the Light the church promised and found only thickening shadows.

  He could still feel fear, though. His bowels still turned to ice water when he heard movement in this hole beneath the earth. He had been dropped in the pits with the Harlanian dead. The victors in a battle always did the same. Their own dead were burned on pyres. The bodypits were one part convenience – bodies rotted and the rot brought disease – and one part bribe. The bodies were an offering to the carrion-eating people who lived in the tunnels far underground, the ghouls.

  The sounds of movement were wet as the creature approaching him crawled through the putrefaction. The rat fled. Thornto closed his eyes. He was surprised at how quickly he had accepted the inevitability of his death but he did not want to be eaten alive by the vile thing who’s charnel breath even now made him want to gag. He tried to swallow but felt blood surge through the leaking hole in his throat. He convinced himself that he could taste the rot. He almost sobbed as something sniffed him: the vile parody of a friendly dog. Then the creature was still. Thornto did not open his eyes. He stifled a squeal when bony clawed, inhuman fingers probed the wound at his neck. He flinched as the thing made a growling noise. It sounded almost thoughtful.

  There was more squelching as it moved around and then scaly fingers grasped his ankle and started to drag him further down the pile of bodies. He tried to scream but only a gurgling rasp came out.

  He opened his eyes and saw the back of the creature that was dragging him. He wore a strange coat with a long split tail and a hat shaped like a chimney. The pale skin visible on the hand that grasped his ankle and the back of the creature’s head was covered in a patchwork of mottled mould.

  It almost came as a relief to Thornto when he finally died...

  ...and then woke screaming. His blood and skin burned. It was agony. He screamed and screamed. His eyes were open but he was too intent on the pain to focus on his surroundings. His scream was a dry, hoarse rasping noise. He thrashed around but he was manacled to a sturdy wooden backboard by his ankles and wrists. Exhausted, he sagged in his restraints. Dry sobs wracked his frame.

  “I am sorry. I would not cause you pain but the process...” The voice was strange, cultured, educated. His Harlanian was heavily accented and sounded mushy, as if the speaker had too many teeth in his mouth, or his tongue was too thick.

  Thornto managed to look up. He became aware of a scratchiness in his throat, an itch within and without. The figure in front of him was presumably the same one he’d seen in the bodypit. The same strange coat and hat. His skin was pale, mouldy, and looked much thicker than normal skin. He had a faintly canine cast to his features and a slight stoop. Under his strange coat he wore a shirt, and between the shirt and the coat an odd sleeveless garment that was fastened with shiny, round metal toggles.

  “But please I must ask you not to scream again. Strictly speaking I should not have a living human here.” The ghoul, for Thornto was sure that was what he was, came across as nervous, even timid. Thornto was aware of yipping and barking from beyond the chamber. Had he been in less pain he knew he would have been terrified. He’d heard that sound before in lichyards and after the plague had come to the village of Sherevale. It was the sound of ghouls hunting.

  “The call to feast,” his ghoul captor explained.

  Thornto’s vision blurred; he managed to look around the chamber he found himself in. It was the oddest place he had ever seen. The walls looked as though they had been made from smooth mortar. Everywhere were strange apparatus, bottles of manifold shapes and sizes, curling tubes connecting them as fluids of various colours dripped or flowed through them. He saw jars with pickled body parts, bones, and entire skeletons. He thought back to the things that he had done with Roswalda that perhaps only a man and wife should do and wondered if he’d gone to hell.

  “Am I in hell?” he croaked. His voice sounded like it belonged to a much older man.

  “Your throat was a ruin, I had to sew the wound shut. I think someone had cut it,” the ghoul told him.

  The pain hadn’t subsided but Thornto found himself just about capable of coping with it. He stared at the ghoul.

  “And no you’re not in hell, this is my laboratory.” He gave this some thought. “Well it’s not my laboratory, it’s my master’s.”

  “Who are you?” Thornto managed.

  “My name is Gritcham, I am an apprentice necrologist.”

  Thornto had no idea what a necrologist was, apprentice or otherwise, but it sounded a lot like necromancer.

  “Necromancy is a sin...” he managed.

  “Isn’t everything in the eyes of the Church of the Light?” the ghoul asked. “I’m a necrologist. I study death. I’m not a necromancer.”

  “What have you done?” Thornto asked, a thick line of viscous drool dripped from his mouth. As he slumped forwards he realised that he was naked. His skin was chalk white, like a corpse. “Am I dead?”

  “You were, I think,” Gritcham said, “I revived you. It’s an alchemical process, one of my own devising.” He sounded proud of himself.

  “Monster...” Thornto muttered.

  “There will be some changes...” Gritcham admitted, he sounded genuinely regretful.

  Thornto thought of Roswalda. What he had been, what he had become, and then he started to sob. Then he screamed again as the tears burned his eyes.

  “Shh!” Gritcham told him, his bony-clawed hand, stinking of strong alcohol, covered Thornto’s mouth. “You probably shouldn’t cry, the tears are mostly embalming fluid. You really need to be quiet. If we’re discovered you’ll be destroyed.”

  The thick, iron-banded wooden door slammed open. Another ghoul, taller, more powerfully built than the decidedly spindly Gritcham stood in the doorway. He was dressed similarly to the apprentice necrologist, only his clothes were grander and his skin much more wrinkled. Gritcham looked terrified.

  The master opened his maw-like mouth and emitted some very angry sounding yips and barks. Gritcham answered, head bowed, like a hunting dog offering obeisance to the pack alpha. This exchange went on for a few moments more and then the master stepped out into the corridor beyond the ‘laboratory’, he raised his voice and it was clear to Thornto that he was calling other ghouls.

  Thornto looked at Gritcham. It was difficult to tell on the ghoul’s barely human face but Thornto thought he saw a mixture of fear and shame.

  “Is he going to destroy me?” Thornto asked, even through the pain he could hear the eagerness in his own voice.

  Gritcham shook his head despondently.

  “We are to be taken before the queen.”

  Two ghouls in robes of royal dark purple unshackled him, their yellow eyes looking out through the eyeholes in skull masks of beaten silver. He was then marched out of the ‘laboratory’ and through passages that were either formed of the same material as the walls of the laboratory, or had been carved out of natural rock. The master followed, dragging Gritcham after him by the scruff of the neck.

  The passages were dimly lit by pitch-burning torches in metal sconces. The other ghouls moved in the shadow. Thornto only caught glimpses of their pale flesh, their yellow eyes that caught the torchlight like the night fire in those of a wolf. The ghouls lived in caves running up the walls of the larger passages. They wore only loincloths and moved more like animals than the seemingly educated Gritcham. They yipped, howled and barked at each other as he passed, some of
them growling. It was clear that they were less than pleased at his presence in their world. Thornto didn’t care. He prayed to the Light for a return to death.

  The queen’s chamber was a huge cavern, its walls shrouded in darkness. Large braziers were placed so that their glow illuminated the throne and the towering statue behind it. The statue was surrounded by scaffold, clearly a work in process. As far as Thornto could make out in his pained state, it depicted a jackal; he’d once seen a picture of one in a bestiary, with the face of a stunningly beautiful woman.

  In front of the statue was an uncomfortable looking stone throne softened by several large cushions. The throne was flanked on either side by ghouls in very ancient looking armour. They were standing as straight as they could manage, holding pole arms, the light from the braziers shining through their membranous ears.

  There were holes in the cavern floor. The lights from the braziers didn’t quite penetrate into every corner. Thornto was aware of movement in the shadows, though he wasn’t sure if it was real or his mind playing tricks with him. As he was escorted past one of the holes he glanced down. Ghouls were clambering up the rock and out of the impenetrable darkness towards him. More than anything, more than being in a cavern full of a cannibalistic people, it was the darkness he saw in the pit that disquieted him, that made him forget his burning blood, and his skin so tight he felt it might burst.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Thornto realised that there was a figure sat on the sandstone throne. She was wearing a simple cotton dress that showed enough of her legs and arms to have been considered positively indecent at court. She did not look like one of the ghouls. Closer still and he saw that hers was the face on the statue. Or at least half of her face was, the other half, the right hand side, was a ruin, as were the visible parts of the right side of her body. Her black hair framed her face and she wore a golden circlet decorated with a jackal’s head. Despite the things he’d seen recently, Thornto was still somehow appalled by her appearance. It was a mockery of beauty.

  The Ghoul Queen watched him, dark eyes like coal, as he was escorted forwards and pushed down on his knees a little distance from the throne. He was aware of the same thing happening to Gritcham.

  She turned to look at the master necrologist. His head was bowed.

  “Well?” she asked in strangely accented Harlanian. Her voice was low, cold but, despite the distance from the throne and the strange things the cavern did to noise, her voice carried.

  “I’m sorry, your majesty, it was my apprentice...” Gritcham’s master managed. One thing was clear, the ghouls feared their queen.

  She turned to look at Gritcham and Thornto heard the apprentice whimper.

  “I am sorry...” was all Gritcham could say. Thornto glanced at him to see tears running down his face.

  “Why is it alive?” she asked.

  As the silence drew out Thornto tried to decide what he wanted here. It seemed the best thing he could hope for was a quick death. He was starting to care less and less about whether or not the ghouls ate him after he died.

  “I was developing an alchemical process, your majesty. I just sought to test it.”

  The Ghoul Queen stood up and walked over to Gritcham, All was silent in the huge cavern except for the sound of her sandals on the stone. The watching ghouls were very still. Thornto couldn’t shake the feeling that given a signal the ghouls would descend on them both and tear them apart.

  She touched Gritcham’s chin with a long lacquered nail and tilted the whimpering apprentice’s head up to look her in the eyes.

  “Despite the recent bounty, do you feel we have enough food that you can spoil it?” she asked. Gritcham swallowed hard but said nothing. “Why do we not bring living food into our tunnels?”

  “Because of the human’s church, your majesty,” Gritcham told her. That got Thornto’s attention.

  “We have an unspoken accord with the humans,” she said. “We eat their dead, out of their sight, and we pretend not to exist. In return, their church does not descend into the earth with their burning machines.” Thornto wasn’t quite sure what her words meant. What machines? “It is an accord which benefits both sides as the humans would much rather fight each other than face us in the dark.”

  This much at least was true, Thornto thought.

  “Kill me,” he said quietly, raising her head to look at the Ghoul Queen.

  She turned towards him.

  “You were a nobleman?” she asked.

  “A minor knight,” he said.

  “Are there those who value you, care for you?”

  Thornto thought about Roswalda and his father.

  “They will be told I am dead. They will have no reason to look for me, certainly not down here.”

  She moved to stand in front of him.

  “You sound as though you have a tale of woe to tell,” she said. He could hear the mockery in her voice.

  “You don’t care,” he told her.

  “This is true. You will be destroyed.”

  The news almost came as a relief. Except. He found himself thinking of the Red Earl. What he had been about to do to the girl, the captives under guard. He remembered a knife blunted from killing scraped across his neck. Faecal, Bloody Stephen, Rust Mouth, the Chirurgeon, Frederick Cotter and Jonathan the Bastard: their continued existence was a blight.

  The Ghoul Queen knelt down in front of him and looked into his eyes. Thornto tried not to flinch at her appearance as she studied him.

  “My, you were beautiful once,” she breathed. “Now just spoiled meat.”

  “Just kill me,” he told her.

  “Did you enjoy it so much the first time?” she asked. The cold cavern air was heavy with anticipation. The eagerness of the waiting ghouls felt like a physical weight. “You’ve thought of something to live for, haven’t you?” she asked. Thornto said nothing. “I have been alive for so long, millennia. If you could only see the folly of your race from my perspective you would realise how meaningless it all is. Our wants, our needs, our loves...” She leaned in closer, he smelled sandalwood and rotting meat, “... our hates.” She straightened up, looking down at him again. “I think if I let you go the depth of your hatred would push you to actions that could prove entertaining.”

  She was right. Lord Philippe had been right as well. The mere remembrance of the child he’d been, a naive fool, ignorant enough to take chivalric values seriously. How the Red Earl must have laughed, his father too. It was clear that the Lord Philippe had meant to mould him, make him another monster like the rest of the men of the Crimson Companies, like the earl himself. He wondered if they had all known, his uncles, all the older knights and nobles. They tended to leave the horror and the rape out of the stories of the war. Had his father been no different from the Red Earl?

  “Whatever you’ve realised,” the queen said, reading his expression, “I fear it’s come too late for you.” She did not sound all together unkind.

  In many ways it was better not to live in the world that he’d found himself in.

  “I cannot take the risk, you have to be destroyed,” she told him.

  He just nodded again.

  One of the ghouls in the silver skull-masks and purple robes cleared their throat. Thornto and the queen turned to look at him.

  “Yes?” the Ghoul Queen asked. The irritation in her voice was plane to hear. The robed ghoul started to make yipping noises.

  “In Harlanian!” she instructed.

  “Begging you majesty’s pardon but you cannot destroy the meat,” he said.

  The queen put one hand on her hip and stared at the ghoul for what felt like a very long and uncomfortable time.

  “And why not?” she finally asked.

  “He has already been dead.” the robed ghoul said, Thornto was starting to suspect that he was a priest of some kind. “The Charnel God has decreed that meat can only be killed once.”

  “The Charnel God has decreed nothing,” the queen said hotly, “because
the Charnel God is an idiot god.” There were gasps from many of the ghouls present, not least the two robed priests. “I swear if you didn’t make this up then others of your ilk did in the past.”

  “You deny the Charnel God!” the other priest cried.

  Thornto had little idea about what was going on but he didn’t think the Charnel God sounded very pleasant.

  “Of course not! His existence is self-evident. I suspect, however, he has little interest in making idiot pronouncements that will risk the security of our tunnels. The same cannot be said of a priesthood that has more than a little vested interest in challenging my authority for their own sakes, regardless of the threat.”

  “Your majesty, you do us wrong, we will be happy to show you the appropriate passages...” the first priest told her.

  “Enough!” she snapped and turned to Thornto.

  “What will you do I wonder?” she mused.

  Thornto found that despite the situation he felt little fear. He nursed his cold hard hatred. He felt it growing like a pearl in an oyster within him.

  “I wish your people no ill will,” he told her, surprised that he meant it.

  She studied him for a few moments.

  “I believe you.”

  “What of the apprentice?” the second priest asked. Thornto had all but forgotten Gritcham. “He can be sacrificed, given to the Charnel God.”

  “No,” the queen said, turning her back on them all as she returned to her throne. “He is to be banished to the surface.”

  “No!” Gritcham screamed, “Your majesty, please!” he begged. Thornto heard the terror in his voice. He found himself smiling. He wasn’t sure why.

  “Your majesty, that would...” the second priest started. The queen spun round to face him just as she reached the throne.

  “Silence!” she spat, and it was quiet again, except for Gritcham’s sobbing. “Your little power play created this situation, and now you will live with its consequences, do you understand me?”