The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (24 page)

Matilda sobs. “Morgan!”

The door in front of me bangs against the casks again. The combined weight of the plaguers forces the barrels back another few inches. I throw myself against the door but it doesn’t budge. The plaguers have leverage. Arms reach through the door. Hands grasp for me. Another head squeezes into the gap, all blood and broken teeth and mad eyes of ebony. It hisses. The casks slide backward. More heads peer through. I put my shoulder into the door above the barrels but my boots slide along the floor. Demon eyes stare at me. The cries are terrible. Their quarry is at hand, and they bay like the hounds of hell.

I abandon the door.

Tristan and Zhuri are almost at the servants’ entryway. Tristan has his arms around Morgan’s waist. Morgan still holds Matilda, who falls to her knees and retches. She looks up and calls his name and sobs. Her voice is changing. It’s as if several people are speaking through one throat. The sound of it sends a shiver through my body. I pick up my helmet and throw it through the servant doorway into the hallway beyond, then help Matilda to her feet. But it is too late.

One of the barrels overturns behind me. Water floods the kitchen and fills the room with the bitter scent of brine. Plaguers push past the door and stagger toward us. A woman slips in the spill and takes down two others. But there are many more. Far too many. And they are on us. I feel hands grab at my armor. Fingers clutch at Matilda.

“Leave her!” Zhuri shouts. “Leave her!”

Tristan drags Morgan backward. The Moor uses one of the guns to shove at Matilda, but it is unnecessary. The plaguers have her. I hack at their arms, but more and more of them take hold of her. Hands slide against my armor. Bodies press against me; I feel their weight dragging me down. Something gnaws at my boot.

“Morgan!” Matilda shrieks and grabs his hand. I wrench myself free of the grasping plaguers and duck past Matilda. I am the angel of death and I leave her in their clutches. Oh, Heavenly Father, I leave her to the demons.

Tristan and I pull Morgan toward the doorway. Zhuri jabs at the plaguers with the gun barrel. We inch through the cramped servants’ doorway and it becomes a tug o’ war. Tristan and I heave at Morgan, and the plaguers pull at Matilda.

“
Morgan
!” Matilda’s body lurches with sobs. “
Morgan
!”

Her hand slips slowly out of Morgan’s grasp. He lashes at us with his free arm but we don’t let go. And neither do the plaguers. They pull Matilda backward little by little, and we pull Morgan backward little by little. And I feel the sting of tears once more. I look at Matilda and think of Allison Moore.

Countless hands reach past Matilda to claw at Morgan. I lean back with all my weight. The tips of Morgan’s fingers are hooked against Matilda’s. Her eyes are wide and gray and filled with tears. Her fingers slowly pry apart.

She shrieks one last time, her voice pitched unnaturally high. “
Morgan
!”

And then the tug o’ war is over. Tristan and I fall backward. Morgan falls onto us. I look up and watch Matilda disappear behind a fog of falling plaguers. Her eyes are the last things I see of her. Black and shiny as prayer beads.

Zhuri kicks the door shut and she is gone. We lay gasping on the floor, unmoving.

Until something behind us snarls.

A woman wearing an apron launches herself at Morgan. I grasp the sword of St. Giles and rise to my feet, but Morgan is in a fury. He pins the woman to the ground and slams his fists into her face again and again until she is no longer recognizable as human. He continues to swing his arms and grunt even after we tear him away from her. His knuckles are bloody and swollen and, at that moment, there is no sanity in his eyes.

“It’s all right, Morgan.” Tristan pulls Morgan’s head against his. “I’m so sorry. Everything will be all right, brother.” Morgan rips himself from Tristan’s grasp and shoves him. He lunges for the servants’ door, but I throw my arms around him from behind, and Zhuri throws himself against the door.

“She is gone, my Christian friend,” the Moor says. “I am sorry. But she is gone.”

Morgan struggles against me, screaming and jerking his torso wildly, but Tristan helps me wrestle him to the ground. We hold him until he stops moving, until the anger in his eyes is replaced by tears. Tristan and I stand, but Morgan remains on the floor, staring distantly and weeping.

“There are no windows here,” Zhuri says. “We can’t see how many are outside.”

“There were at least twenty in that room.” My soul feels battered. “If there were twenty at the other door as well, that would still leave seventy-five villagers out there somewhere.”

“Peace shall come to them,” Morgan says.

“What?” Tristan sends me a worried glance.

“The archbishop said they need to be given peace,” Morgan says. “Their souls are not at rest.”

“There are too many, Morgan,” I say. “We can’t give peace to a hundred and twenty villagers.”

He looks at me. His eyes are bleary, and from the look of them, I’m not certain sanity has returned to him. “But we must give it to one.”

Zhuri shakes his head. “There are twenty or more of those creatures in there. If we open that door, there will be no way to shut it. They will overwhelm us.”

“She needs peace.” Morgan rubs at his eyes. “Her soul is worth more than all of ours, and it must go to the Lord.”

Tristan and Zhuri look to me. I let out a long breath. If it were Elizabeth, I would want at least this much. I nod to Morgan. “She needs peace.”

We each take one of the guns from Tristan’s shoulder bag. I find a gilded hand cannon with a hexagonal tube. Zhuri still holds the gun he used to fend off the plaguers — the one he brought to Sir Thomas from Spain. Morgan draws out the long weapon I had seen in Tristan’s bag earlier — a massive gun that might be more culverin than hand cannon. Tristan cradles God’s Love, the ten-shot hand bombard. I don’t think he will ever let go of that weapon.

Three of the four guns are loaded. Tristan spent the powder in his gun when he sent Sir Thomas to Jesus. So Zhuri helps him pour the mixture of saltpeter and sulfur into the casing of the cannon. They pack it with a rod, sifting and compacting several times to ensure that each of the chambers is full, then place an iron projectile in each of the ten holes. They wad fabric into the holes to secure the slugs.

“And that’s it?” Tristan asks.

“I think so,” Zhuri replies.

“You think so?” Tristan stares at the cannon. “I thought you knew how to do this?”

“How would I know?” Zhuri says. “I said you Christians don’t let us Moors have guns. Sir Thomas explained the method to me once, but I’ve never actually done it.”

“We put an awful lot of powder into this,” Tristan says. “Are you sure we didn’t put too much?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Zhuri says. He nods confidently several times, then shrugs. “Probably.”

Tristan sighs. “What’s the worst that could happen?” He clears his throat and studies the cannon. I know he’s thinking about Sir Thomas’s misfire.

There are six powder-caked firing cords in Tristan’s satchel, and two flints. I light one of the cords and give it to Zhuri. “I’m going to open the door,” I say. “Morgan, are you all right to fire? Good. You fire first. Zhuri, you light the touchhole on Morgan’s cannon. When he fires, I’m going to shut the door. Then we’ll keep doing it until we give Matilda her peace.”

Morgan flinches at the sound of her name. He raises his gun. It’s a heavy thing — two feet of thick iron tubing and another two feet of oak shaft. So heavy that he has to rest the metal tube on Tristan’s shoulder. Tristan is reluctant but straps his helmet on and leans his head away from the cylinder.

The plaguers behind the door shriek and thump with more force. As if they can sense we are about to open the door. I take hold of the latch. Zhuri holds the firing cord just above the touchhole of Morgan’s cannon. Tristan tilts his head even farther from the gun; I can see the tension in his posture, in the rising and falling of his chest.

“Make sure you aim for their faces,” I say. “It won’t be any good firing into their chests.”

“And not my face,” Tristan says. “Make sure the gun doesn’t blow up in my neck.”

I nod to the three men, then open the door.

The first plaguer is a woman, but it is not Matilda. She wears a woolen hood and a blood-stained robe, and her mouth is open so wide that it seems like she is laughing. Zhuri closes one eye and grimaces, leans away from the gun and drops the match cord on to the touchhole.

There is a moment’s hesitation. The plaguer woman takes a lurching step toward us.

And then the room explodes with fire and sulfurous smoke and a biblical crash that takes away all sound and replaces it with a ringing that grows louder and softer.

It is like sorcery.

The top left quarter of the woman’s head disappears in an instant. The other plaguers stop moving and stare toward the doorway as the woman’s body falls backward.

Tristan falls to his knees, both his hands pressed against the side of his great helm. Zhuri leaps into the air and cheers. I shut the door.

“Great shot Morgan!” Zhuri shouts.

Tristan yanks off his helmet and covers his ear with one hand.

“You all right Tristan?” I ask.

He nods. “That woman’s going to need a smaller hood.”

“You’re not vomiting anymore,” I say.

“I noticed that too,” he says. “I feel much better. Think I just had too much mead last night.”

I stare at him. “Truly?”

He gives me a lopsided smile. “Truly.”

I smile back. “You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“Yes,” he says. “My mother used to say that all the time. But she might have meant it in a different way.”

I smile again, but I can’t hold the expression for long. I hear Matilda’s screams echoing in my mind. “Zhuri, you fire next.”

Zhuri nods and holds up the elegant cannon he brought from Spain. It is shorter and slimmer than Morgan’s, and he has no trouble lifting it. Tristan takes the firing cord and lets out a deep breath. I move to the door, nod to them and open it once again.

A man stands in the narrow doorway. He has broken his jaw somehow. He groans, lower teeth wobbling back and forth. Tristan stands as far from Zhuri as possible and lights the powder. I put my hands to my ears.

Thunder splinters the air. Light and smoke and a concussion so loud that it rattles my bones. But there is no sorcery this time. The plaguer lurches toward us unharmed. I squeeze the door shut behind him and grab his hair, then I shove my sword deep into the back of his head, until he stops moving.

“What happened?” Zhuri asks.

“You missed,” I say.

Zhuri shakes his head and looks at the cannon. “How could that be?”

“How
can
that be,” Tristan says. “Step aside, kind sirs.” He hefts the imposing hand bombard and smiles. “Time for the Lord to giveth.”

God’s Love is light but awkward. Tristan has to place his gauntleted hand directly beneath the thick iron head to keep it from dipping. He blows out a quick breath. “If this thing explodes we’ll never find my hand again.”

Zhuri holds the firing cord and tenses his shoulders. “If that thing explodes, we will not have eyes to search for it.”

I take hold of the iron latch on the door. “Ready?”

Tristan’s helmet bobs forward in a nod. Zhuri shakes his head. “Not really.”

I lift the latch. All four of us cringe and lean away from the weapon. Zhuri holds the cord in two fingers, just above the touchhole, with his eyes closed. I open the door.

The firing cord dips. The powder flashes. The room is rocked by an explosion so loud that it rattles the doors in the room and makes the other cannon blasts sound meek. Fire blazes from the weapon and so much smoke belches from the iron head that I can’t even see my hands on the door latch. I hear Tristan falling to the floor in a crash of armor. I hear bodies thumping to the ground in the kitchen. Then silence. Even the plaguers are quiet.

When the smoke clears enough to allow vision, the plaguers in the kitchen stagger forward reticently, as if dazed. It takes me a moment to see the pile of bodies at the doorstep. Some thrash and moan, but most are silent and broken. Blood leaks into the servants’ quarters from the carcasses. I stare at the carnage and steady myself on the doorframe. Tristan felled no less than seven plaguers with one blast.

The hand bombard lies on the floor, ten feet away from the doorway. Tristan is also on the floor, lying on his back, his head tilted forward so that he can peer at the mess he made. He laughs, sits upright and howls. He points to the fallen plaguers and shouts, “Look at that! Look at that!”

Zhuri’s eyes are as big as church windows as he studies the pile of bloody flesh. His voice is a whisper. “Allah be praised.”

The approaching plaguers seem to shake off their reticence and rush toward the door. My cannon leans against the wall. I heft it and point it at one of the afflicted. “Tristan, slow them down.”