Dark North

Thirty-Seven

Rufio had lost so much blood that Urgol had to lift him into the black enamel coach, where Zalmyra laid a cloak over him. She closed and bolted the shutters, and sat facing her son through the dimness, while the woodwose climbed to the driving-bench. With a crack of his whip, the powerful team of horses surged out of the undercroft, trundling up the spiralling ramp, running down any figures that blundered into their path, severing tentacles with steel-rimmed wheels. At the top, the two foremost stallions reared, their hooves smashing the doors off their hinges.

The team crashed out into the courtyard. As they rattled towards the entry tunnel, Zalmyra opened her shutter just once to look out. Amid the carnage strewing the courtyard, she spotted the distinctive golden hair of Countess Trelawna, though it was now plastered across her shoulders and breasts as she sat cross-legged in the rain, cradling the form of a fallen knight. Another figure, the countess’s old nurse, crawled through the flood-waters.

“What’s happening?” Rufio gasped, too weak to open his own shutter.

“Nothing,” she said, closing out the light. But she seemed distracted. They rumbled into the entry tunnel; ahead, the drawbridge was already down. Abruptly, the duchess rapped on the ceiling. “Urgol! Stop!”

The vehicle slid to a halt, and shuddered as Urgol climbed from the bench. He opened the duchess’s door. “Mistress?”

“Go back,” she said. “Bring Countess Trelawna. She’s coming with us.”

Urgol nodded and clambered back to the roof to retrieve his iron-headed club.

Rufio looked up with an expression of almost absurd hopefulness.

“Don’t mistake me for a caring mother-in-law,” Zalmyra said. “I’ve no interest in your pretty little courtesan. It’s the brat she carries in her belly. Even if we didn’t need heirs, no grandchild of mine will be fed to the Old One.”

Rufio’s expression changed. “Grandchild?”

She sneered. “Somehow, your lack of knowledge makes you even more pathetic. You know why she never told you? Because she didn’t trust you to keep it secret. Her annulment is too precious to her.”

Rufio peered at her, baffled. And then, to her surprise, he cackled — as if genuinely amused. “Trelawna’s annulment is the only precious thing to her,” he finally said. “There’s no grandchild. She wouldn’t let me lie with her until we were lawfully married.”

“What?”

Now it was Rufio’s turn to sneer, though he also cringed with pain. “We lay together once, but many years ago.” His cackle became a full-throated laugh.

Outside, Urgol leapt down from the roof, club at his shoulder, and set off along the tunnel. At first, Zalmyra said nothing, although the look on her face was so terrifying that Rufio, had he not been sure he was dying, would have cowered from her.

“Urgoool!” she shrieked. The woodwose rushed back to her door. When she spoke again, her marble-white face had blanched to an even more bloodless hue. “Urgol… I’ve changed my mind. Go back there… and destroy the little slut who brought this destruction on us!”

Urgol nodded and strode away.

“No!” Rufio cried.

“Don’t be foolish,” his mother said as he tried to climb out. “She’s as good as dead anyway.”

“You vindictive bitch!” He gagged with pain as the cloak fell away, revealing a body drenched with gore. Slowly, fumbling, he managed to open the door.

“Then go and die,” Zalmyra said. “Those who defy the Malconi have earned their fate.”

“And the Malconi haven’t?” He grimaced as he put his feet on solid ground. “You who stand for nothing good?”

“Don’t be an imbecile. This is a minor setback. We will rise again.”

Rufio heaved himself to the ground. “I couldn’t… couldn’t wish for anything less.”

He stumbled away, and Zalmyra remained alone in the coach, absorbed in the bauble on her wand. The emerald fires inside it blazed. “In which case, my dear son, we must rise without you!”

High overhead, the thunder still raged and the lightning flashed. Below that, with no less savagery, Lucan fought with the facsimile of his father.

They smote at each other two-handed, dancing back and forth along the battlemented walk, a host of other ghouls watching in silence. Sparks flew as the hate-filled blades bickered, but Lucan was tired to his core. The ferocity of his father’s blows was more than he could endure. Even when, fleetingly, he spied an open guard, and drove through it, embedding his blade to eight inches in Duke Corneus’s chest, the fight continued. Black blood cascaded from the wound, but the demon was neither hurt nor weakened. Lucan tottered backward, and the monster laughed as it came on.

“Weakling!” it grated, showing long pegs of green teeth which even the real Corneus had never possessed. “You are ailing… I can… feel it. You are not fit… to unfurl… my black banner…”

“Once this is over, I will never unfurl it again,” Lucan retorted, counter-striking, slashing hard under his father’s guard, chopping through mail and flesh — so deeply that his blade lodged. Lucan tried to yank it loose but it would not shift. Still the duke was unhurt, and Lucan had to draw back unarmed.

Behind him now was nothing but a drop of thirty feet. More chill rain swept over him. Thunder drummed. Even if, by some miracle, he could dispose of this arch-abomination, another would follow, and another. There were more up here than he could count, and still more tentacles writhed along the battlements and groped up the outer wall, balls of clenched, foetal flesh unravelling at their tips.

Cruel laughter distracted him back to the vision of his father, slowly levering Heaven’s Messenger from his shoulder. With a scrape of bone and fresh gouts of black gore, he worked it loose — and examined it, seemingly amused that the pagan runes with which the blade had once been inscribed were scored away.

“And which god…” he wondered, “will save you now? The one you… defile each day… by your very… existence?”

Lucan backed to the battlements. The drop was perilous. He could not hope to survive it without at least shattering his limbs.

The apparition cast away its own sword, hefting Lucan’s instead. Rain slashed over the burned features, as the green teeth bared in a rictus grin. “Let me… test your faith… with… a Christian blade…”

It raised Heaven’s Messenger above its head. Lucan leapt forward, but the facsimile had been waiting for this, and greeted him with a forearm smash in the throat, knocking Lucan flat on his back. He lay stunned, helpless. Towering over him, the living ghost raised the blade on high for one mighty, butchering blow that would split him from cranium to crotch. Lucan tried to pray, but he no longer knew how. The apparition laughed again, and prepared to strike.

But the lightning struck first.

The jagged bolt tore down from the firmament in a blaze of blinding blue flame, finding the long steel blade held aloft. There was a detonation like the bursting of Heaven’s vault, and a glaring flash…

The pounding rain had washed Alaric’s lifeless body so clean that there was barely a drop of blood or speck of dirt left on him. As he lay in Trelawna’s arms, he looked as though he was merely sleeping. And now, almost as quickly as the downpour had begun, it started to abate.

Slowly, in a daze, the countess looked up.

A pearlescent blue sky was breaking through the ragged clouds. The hiss of falling rain slowly ceased, to be replaced by a trickling in the gutters and a dripping from the eaves — and by the approaching stump of heavy feet.

Trelawna saw Urgol advancing across the courtyard on foot.

His thick, hairy hide was wet and matted. For some reason it made him look less like an ape and more like a man, though still a gargantuan, brutish form. His fierce yellow eyes were locked on her; his sharp teeth showed through his snarling lips. When ten yards short, he produced his iron-headed club from behind his back.

“Lay your head on the paving stone, countess,” he grunted. “This can be so quick you won’t even know it has happened.”

Trelawna gazed mutely up at him, paralysed. Urgol shrugged, and in two strides was alongside her, his bludgeon raised.

And with a shriek, Gerta leapt onto him.

The old woman had little strength left in her frail body, but she summoned everything she had, clinging to his wet fur with one hand, attempting to claw out his eyes with the other. Urgol shrugged her off the way he would an irritating insect. Almost as an afterthought, he swatted at her with the club, catching her full in the ribs, hurling her at least ten feet, a thing of rags and sticks, tumbling end over end.

Trelawna screamed as much in outrage as in fear, and attempted to get to her feet, but was still hampered by Alaric’s corpse. Urgol turned back to face her — and felt a stinging pain across his left forearm.

He spun around, and found Rufio rocking back and forth, his lower body drenched crimson, a gladius quaking in his fist. Urgol tried to push him away, but Rufio slashed at him again. Urgol whipped his arm back, snarling. Rufio gritted his teeth in an effort to show that he was unafraid, but it gave him an even more cadaverous aspect.

“Do what you must, Urgol,” came a sibilant voice, travelling on the wind. His mistress, still enclosed in her carriage, speaking from afar. “Ignore his name, his lineage. Obey my will…”

Urgol swung his club back, and swept it down, striking Rufio’s legs sideways, smashing them like shards of charcoal. Rufio dropped, only beginning to squeal as he lay in the wreckage of his own body.

Urgol turned back to find Trelawna. She had got to her feet and tried to retreat, only to slip in a puddle and fall onto her side. But someone else now blocked the creature’s path to her.

Lucan.

The filth of battle had washed off him in the rain, but he looked bedraggled and weary, and confused.

The thunderbolt that had blown the facsimile of his father to jellified fragments had seared every one of the facsimiles, all over Castello Malconi. Simultaneously, they’d collapsed on themselves, the writhing tentacles blistering and bursting; the shredded, smouldering remnants whipping in a frenzy, hissing and half-melted as they withdrew to the depths of the fortress, from which a stench too foul to breathe now rose.

Lucan had seen it. As he’d descended to the courtyard, he’d trudged through the smoking, semi-liquefied husks, among fragments of burned tentacles which could do no more now than twitch feebly.

He understood how this had happened. But why?

Urgol’s scornful voice brought him out of his reverie. “Well… if it isn’t another warrior of Christ. Here to collect souls for his master.” The woodwose bared his fangs. “I go one better… I collect souls for myself!”

His club crashed down, and Lucan had to duck aside. He hefted Heaven’s Messenger, but it was nothing more now than a cindered cross-hilt. He threw it away, casting around for another weapon. The pole-axe stood in the foot of the shaven-headed bravo he’d slain earlier; he yanked it free and dodged as another massive club-stroke was aimed at him.

Trelawna watched the combat, terrified.

Urgol struck again. Lucan parried, the impact jolting his body with nauseating force.

“Not yourself, sir knight?” the woodwose rumbled. “What would the Lord say?”

Lucan responded by kicking at the club to try and dislodge it, and slamming the pole-axe haft down on Urgol’s naked foot. Urgol took a step backward, but then lurched in with another overhead buffet, which again almost knocked Lucan from his feet. They circled each other warily. The only sound in the castle yard was the heavy rasp of their breath, the scuffing of their feet, the crash of steel on timber.

Lucan still had the deadlier weapon, but the extra weight of Urgol’s club, with his mammoth strength, was telling. When the woodwose set about him in a flurry, it was all he could do to fend off three blows, before taking the fourth — a huge thrust — in the chest, hurling him off balance. He slashed back with the axe-head, but the woodwose smashed it aside and threw a ham-fisted punch. It caught Lucan square on the cheekbone and rang his skull like a bell.

Lucan hit the ground hard, but retained just enough of his faculties to roll away. The woodwose followed, club raised, so he kept on rolling, blow after blow striking clanking concussions from the flagstones. And then a corpse — another of Lucan’s victims from earlier — barred his way, and Urgol caught up and stood astride him. This final blow would have pulverised Lucan’s face, had he not heaved the pole-axe to the horizontal, fists gripping its haft one to either end.

With a massive CRACK, the axe-haft shattered, but the blow was absorbed. Lucan kicked upward, couching his mailed foot in the leather-clad sack between the woodwose’s thighs. Urgol doubled over and staggered back, and Lucan again rolled away. The beast swung around in pursuit. Lucan tried to stand but slid in a puddle; again he rolled. Urgol followed sluggishly. Even should the knight get to his feet in time, he had no weapon — there was nothing with which to fight back.

“Lucan!” came a desperate voice. “Lucan!”

Lucan glanced to his left. Though Rufio lay prone, his face the colour of slate, both legs twisted at awful angles, there was something in his outstretched palm — a gladius.

“Take it…” he gasped.

Lucan scuttled forward, snatched the blade and veered to one side as the mighty club sailed down after him. It hit Rufio full on the forehead, crushing his entire skull to mulch. But the knight was now, at last, on his feet; he twirled, gladius in hand.

Urgol came with a roar. The club descended in a blur, but Lucan spun from its path. As he did, he cut down, carving deep into the woodwose’s thigh.

Its bellow of rage became a howl of anguish.

Lucan continued to spin around the beast, and then he was fast on its back, his arm locked around its brawny neck. With a single thrust, he drove the gladius deep to the left of its spine, twisting it to a chorus of cracking vertebrae.

Urgol’s eyes rolled white, and a spume of blood burst from his mouth.

“My Lord would say,” Lucan hissed into his ear, “consider yourself collected!”

The woodwose gave a faint mewling sound as it crumpled into a lifeless heap. Seconds passed as Lucan stood over it, every muscle taut, his body rank with the stench of sweat and blood, and yet so doused by rainwater that steam rose off him. Slowly, stiffly, he looked around him. No-one else in the castle yard was alive except Trelawna, who sat where he’d last seen her, head slumped to her breast.

When he finally limped towards her, she glanced up and regarded him with a strange indifference. Though still a beauty, her eyes were bleak holes in a face made haggard. Her expression didn’t change when she glanced down at his drawn gladius — not until he tucked it into this belt, and she spotted the ragged scarf knotted around its hilt, and a strange mirthless smile came to her lips.

Duchess Zalmyra watched these events from the driving-bench of her coach, every terrible incident playing out in the green scrying-orb. Now it was over, and she was impassive. The death of her son, Rufio, meant no more to her than the death of her servant, Urgol; in fact, it probably meant less. Rufio had been a failure, a weakling — like his father before him, unfit to head the Malconi clan. His fate had been the same, and was equally deserved.

Zalmyra touched her belly before taking up the reins. She was still ripe enough to produce more sons. All she needed do was entice a strapping young man, and she had never had a problem with that before.

She lashed the team of horses away.

Lucan knelt beside Alaric’s splayed corpse, and after straightening his limbs and planting a kiss on the young man’s alabaster brow, laid the sodden wolfskin over him. At the same time, Trelawna crawled to the broken form of Gerta. The old nursemaid was pale, but at least unmarked. Like Alaric, she looked as if she was sleeping.

Very softly, Trelawna wept. Minutes passed, in which the autumn chill leached into their bones.

“Quite a refuge you chose,” Lucan finally said, “the Malconi clan.”

Trelawna wiped away her tears. “Gerta said the same. If only I’d listened…”

“Gerta was your voice of wisdom. Alaric was mine. We both chose to ignore them.”

“Then we both should have died.”

Lucan glanced towards the high parapet, which was still wreathed in acrid smoke from the lightning strike. Again, he felt only fear and confusion. “For some reason… it was God’s decision that we shouldn’t.”

Trelawna wept again, and at last he moved across and joined her, placing an awkward hand on her shoulder, which he was grateful that she didn’t shrug away.

“So what now?” she sniffled. “We go home… we realise we love each other after all… and these many deaths are forgotten?”

“No,” he said. “We just go home.”