As they'd made ready to depart from the fortress earlier that day a man had arrived from Kailithies, a small village not far from Krymmeni Thesi, to seek an audience with the Grand Master. He claimed strange sounds had recently been heard from beneath the countryside surrounding the village – loud thumps and unintelligible, blasphemous voices chanting.
Sir Richard, hearing the news from another knight, had suggested to de Villaret that he hire the merchant, Leontios, to inscribe more of the flat stones with the mysterious symbols on them and secrete them all over the island in the hope they'd offer some protection against Dagon. The Grand Master hadn't been enthusiastic about the idea of employing an Orthodox Greek to plant heathen symbology on his island but in light of the worrying news from Kailithies had relented.
After Sir Richard had located the Greek merchant and enlisted his aid for the Order – with a further payment of silver coins for his previous help – they'd bade each other a respectful farewell and the knight led his new sergeant to the docks where their ship back to the north of England awaited them.
They stood on the deck in silence for a time now, drinking in the sight of the slowly receding island in the sun, the occasional spot of greenery standing out beautifully against the sandstone of the port and the clear blue of the ocean, lost in their memories of what had happened in Krymmeni Thesi.
“What d'you think happened to that...devil you saw?” Stephen wondered. “Did our mercenaries stop it before it could take physical form? Did they kill it?”
The Hospitaller knight had asked himself the same question repeatedly but would never be sure. “Who knows?” he replied. “Dagon, or whatever that thing was, wasn't alive to begin with; it was just smoke drifting in the air. You can't kill something that's already dead. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination. No one else saw it, did they?” He crossed himself with a shake of his head and reached inside his surcoat to grip the flat stone with the elder sign inscribed on it that Leontios had given him.
Rhodes was left further and further behind as the wind filled their sails and the horrors they'd witnessed there seemed to diminish into the horizon along with the island itself.
“Aye, I'll be glad to get a fresh start back in England,” Sir Richard said with a small smile, beginning to relax for the first time in what seemed like weeks. “It'll be an easy life for us I'm sure. England's mostly at peace and Kirklees is a comfortable estate. We won't need to worry too much about ancient demons there. The only thing we'll need to be wary of are the outlaws – I hear Barnsdale's full of them...”
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Readers of my two full-length novels, Wolf's Head and The Wolf and the Raven will know some of Sir Richard and Stephen's story already, but ever since I was writing Raven I thought they were such good characters that it'd be interesting to look into their background in a little more depth, hence this novella which is, I suppose, something of a prequel to Wolf's Head.
I've tried to write my previous novels from a “realistic” standpoint, so for this work I decided it'd be fun to introduce some minor fantasy or supernatural elements. Dagon comes from an HP Lovecraft story (and is also an ancient Sumerian god) although the “Arra! Dagon!” chant comes from a song by the brilliant death metal band Nile (thank you Karl, Dallas and George!) and my description of him here is based on the recent internet invention Slenderman. The black-eyed people are also taken from modern, internet folklore – search for “black-eyed kids” for some spooky stories...!
I would have liked to include some of the folklore indigenous to Rhodes but was unable to find anything other than cats and sleep-paralysis. The latter is something I suffer from periodically and trust me, it really is as terrifying as I've depicted it here the first few times it happens. Even now, after years of dealing with it, I find it frightening when it happens. I've never seen Dagon but I did see an archetypal 'grey' alien walk into my bedroom and stand beside my bed staring at me when I was about 20. It was a genuinely frightening experience although I didn't wake up with a sore arse so I'm hoping I wasn't really abducted into a UFO...
Grand Master Foulques de Villaret was a real person, and he was a rather arrogant individual – a group of his own Hospitaller Knights attempted to assassinate him in 1317 because of his tyrannical behaviour, so I tried to bring some of that out in the story.
I really hope you enjoyed Knight of the Cross, whether you're a new reader or someone who's read my previous work. If you did, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads and wherever else you like to talk about books, it really does help a self-published author like myself – I don't have an agent to tell people about my work, so I'm reliant on my readers and I greatly appreciate the feedback.
My next novel will be the third in The Forest Lord series and takes up where The Wolf and the Raven left off, so keep an eye out for it. The working title is Rise of the Wolf and it should be out around the end of 2014/ early 2015. In the meantime, I'm working on an audio version of Knight of the Cross with Nick Ellsworth who brilliantly read the Wolf's Head audiobook so look out for that (it should be cheap, as it's a lot shorter than a full-length novel, so if you ever wanted to try an audiobook, now's the time...).
Thanks to Robin Carter for his insightful editing suggestions, to Romina Nicolaides for her invaluable insights into Greek culture, and thank YOU for buying Knight of the Cross!
Steven A. McKay,
Old Kilpatrick,
August 8th, 2014
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