The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (3 page)

BOOK: The Scourge (Kindle Serial)
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Elizabeth. Never shall
I let you out of my sight again
.

Chapter 4

The Medway tumbles
beneath us as we cross the stone bridge at Aylesford. I had wanted to cross the
river at Rochester and follow the old Roman road thereafter, but the attack at Meddestane
forced us west. There are few roads here. We will ride over chalk hills and red
heaths. Sir Morgan tells me it’s for the best.

“That old Roman road is
well travelled,” he says. “Many big towns. Probably teeming with the afflicted.
Out here” — he gestures grandly — “we won’t see a soul.”

As he speaks, I spot a
soul running toward us, a man in a roughspun tunic waving his arms. We pull our
horses to a halt and wait for him. In the distance behind him is a tiny village
of wattle and daub. A small stone church is the only structure of any
significance. Up in the sky a large bird flutters erratically. It can’t be
possible. It has to be a different falcon. I watch it until it settles in a
stand of alders. Morgan doesn’t seem to notice, and I don’t make mention of it.

“Kind sirs!” The man
pants and doubles over as he catches his breath. “Kind…sirs. Thank…thank Our
Lord…that I spotted you.” He is a peasant, with shaggy black hair and a patchy beard.

“How can we help you?”
I ask.

“My daughter. She’s
trapped. One of those monsters chased her into our house. Come quickly!”

Many people say that chivalry
is a dying notion. That honor is dead. This may be true. But no knight I have
ever known can resist a maiden in distress. And though my every thought is to
continue north, toward Elizabeth, I find myself thinking about how close this
village is. How easy it would be to dispatch one afflicted man and be on our
way.

The peasant clasps his
hands together. He has three black circles tattooed onto his right hand above
the thumb. They are odd things to mark your skin with. “Please, m’lords. My
sweet Allison. She’s my only daughter.”

And that
is the final argument. The name thunders in my ears. I draw my sword and nod to
the peasant. “Take us to Allison.”

The thud of our horses’
hooves is the only sound in the village. The settlement seems deserted.
Half-eaten bodies lie scattered everywhere. No one has cleared them. No one has
burned them. Morgan pulls his tunic over his nose. The peasant walks ahead of
us, looking back over his shoulder time and again to make sure we follow. He
holds one hand over his nose.

“My neighbor, Thomas,
he got afflicted,” the peasant says as he walks. “He went into our house while
I was getting wood. My Allison, she was inside. She got herself into the
cellar, through the trapdoor. But Thomas, he’s in the house! My Allison can’t
come out with him inside!”

He runs ahead and we
follow.

“He lives here with
his daughter? In this stench?” Tristan gazes to either side, then back to the
peasant, ten paces ahead. “He seems a bit off to me. Why didn’t he stand
outside the house with a scythe and call Thomas out? Maybe he’s out to ambush
us.”

“Honestly, Tristan,”
Morgan says, “is there anything you trust? This man is obviously a farmer. See
the fields? He’s spent his life working a three-crop rotation and tending to
his family home. He’s never killed anything larger than a pig, and you want him
to take a blade to his neighbor? The Lord says thou shalt not kill. Some people
still respect the Word of the Lord.”

“So he tells
us
to kill his neighbor, instead,” Tristan says. “I understand how it works now.
Thank you, Sir Morgan.”

The peasant takes us
to a home that is ten paces from the stone church. A two-wheeled wagon full of
stones barricades the door. Our peasant locked the plaguer inside with his
daughter.

Howls ring out from
inside the house. We dismount and don our helmets. I point with my sword toward
the church. “Are there plaguers in there?” My voice sounds metallic with the great
helm on.

“No, m’lord.”

“Good. Wait inside.
Keep the door barred. This will be sorted in a moment.”

“I’d prefer to wait
outside, m’lord.”

I stare at him. Tristan
is right. There is something odd about this man. Too many things don’t add up. “If
you want to orphan your daughter, that’s your choice.” Morgan and I stand ten
paces from the door as Tristan takes hold of the wagon’s handles. He rolls the
cart away, groaning with the effort.

I take a breath and
prepare to do my part for honor.

Sir Morgan looks at
me. I nod to him. Tristan takes hold of the cast-iron door latch and glances
our way. I tighten and loosen my grip on the hilt of my sword. Tristan yanks
the door open and ducks behind it.

It takes several
heartbeats for the afflicted neighbor to notice the open door. He is the
largest human I have ever seen, and I have seen many large humans. His arms are
logs, his neck thicker than my thigh. The man takes a shuddering step, then careens
toward us with his head ducked low. It is as close to a run as these things are
capable of.

Morgan and I brace for
the assault, but just as the plaguer reaches the doorway Sir Tristan slams the oaken
door shut. The impact rattles the house. The man shrieks in pain from inside. I
can see Tristan’s shoulders shaking with laughter.

“Are you finished?”
Morgan asks. His voice is pitched high with tension. “You done having sport?” His
sword trembles, but I know Morgan is no coward. All soldiers tremble before a battle.

I call back to the
peasant. “Why didn’t you tell us he was a giant?”

“I weren’t sure it
would help my cause,” the man says.

“Bloody right it
wouldn’t,” Morgan says. “That’s a troll in there, it is.”

The door shakes. I
exhale and nod to Tristan. “At your leisure, Sir Tristan.”

Tristan opens the
door. The monster stoops under the doorframe and runs toward me, his shoulders
dipping and swinging wildly. I get one slash, but his movements are so erratic
that I miss. My blade carves a red moustache over his lip instead of opening
his throat. I feel the tip scrape bone, then the vast bulk of him hits me. We
fall to the ground and his weight makes me gasp. The collar of my breastplate stabs
my throat. The noises that come from the plaguer are those of an animal. Growls
and shrieks. There is no reason. There is no humanity. I can feel his teeth
scraping at the bevor upon my neck. His hands shove at my helmet. I see three
red circles above his thumb. I shove at him, but he has latched on to me, with
one arm under my head. He pulls me toward his mouth like a hungry lover, and I
scream. Not in fear but in anger. His weight is too much to move. Bloody
spittle drips from his mouth. I thank God that the air perforations are on the
opposite side of my helmet.

Sir Tristan and Sir
Morgan take one foot each and pull the man backward, but the plaguer has such a
grip on me that they end up dragging both of us. I shove the man’s face away
from me. He grabs my hand and gnaws on my gauntlet. The gauntlet slips forward.
Cool air strokes my wrist. The man works his teeth lower and lower along my
hand. I scream. It is fear this time.

Sir Morgan batters the
man’s head with his gauntlets. Tristan drags me another three feet. I imagine
they don’t want to use their swords in case they hit me. Battle often drives
logic from the minds of men. “Use your swords!” My voice cracks as I scream.

As one they pick up
their swords and begin their dissection of the man trying to eat me. Their
blades clatter against my armor a few times but I don’t care. They can hack off
one of my legs if it will help remove this Goliath. Blood leaks into my helmet
visor. I feel the heat as it trickles up my cheek. I close my eyes. I have
heard stories of blood spreading the plague.

The giant is
deadweight. More deadweight than you would find in an entire cemetery. I shove
the carcass off me with a roar and rise to my feet. I hop from foot to foot,
groaning as I throw off my helmet and gauntlets. I wipe the blood from my face
with sweat-lathered hands.

 Our peasant runs from
the village. He holds a two-foot silver crucifix in his arms. I point at him.
“There goes our farmer.”

Tristan and Morgan
remove their helmets and watch the peasant run.

“And without his sweet
Allison,” Tristan says.

“Where is he going?”
Morgan asks. “What’s he holding?”

“I saw him run into
the cottage while we were playing with the giant,” Tristan says.

I think about the
three black circles tattooed on the peasant’s hand. I look down at the bloody giant,
at the three red circles tattooed on his hand.  “Thieves.” I work it out
quickly. “Their loot was in the house. The big man got afflicted and our
peasant couldn’t get to the hoard.”

Tristan shakes his
head. “Sir Edward.” He points toward the dwindling peasant and imitates Sir
Morgan. “
That man is a farmer. See the fields? He’s spent his entire life
working a three-crop rotation. He’s never stolen anything in his life
.”

Sir Morgan walks
toward the horses and slips their reins off the oak branch that tethers them.

“Sir Morgan,” Tristan
calls, “does the Word of Our Lord mention stealing?”

Morgan throws Tristan’s
reins at him. “Get on your horse, you clod.”

“What about stupidity?
Does Our Lord and Savior talk about stupidity?”

I peer inside the
house. A dirt floor covered in rushes. No cellar. I look back toward the
running peasant and see nothing. He is gone.

Honor is dead.

Chapter 5

“Edmund the
Groomsman,” Morgan says. We ride northward toward the River Thames while he
tells us about the first plaguer he encountered. I have heard this story, but
not the details.

 “A few years back we
had a carpenter named Paul who liked buggering horses. A terrible thing.
Terrible. We had to send him away.” He takes out his little Bible. It is water stained
and tattered, but he flips through the swollen pages until he finds what he is
looking for. “Cursed is the man who has intercourse with an animal.”

“What if the horse
enjoys it?” Tristan asks.

“You’re an arse, Tristan.”
Morgan peers over his Bible, then reads another verse. “If a man lies with an
animal” — he peers over the Bible at Tristan — “he shall surely be put to
death, and you shall kill the animal.”

“Kill the horse?”
Tristan says. “How ghastly. This is why there are no more centaurs in the
world, Morgan. Because of just this sort of narrow-mindedness.”

I cut Morgan off
before he replies. “What happened with Edmund the Groom?”

Sir Morgan closes the Bible.
His eyes are back in Hastings. “I was bringing my daughter to the stables for a
canter. Edmund, he was sitting next to my horse when I got to the stables. The
horse was lying in the grass outside. I thought it was resting. And Edmund, he
was kneeling at one of its flanks. His hands…they were…” Morgan spreads his
hands as if resting them on something in front of him. “They were on the horse.
It wasn’t natural how he held his hands. Wasn’t natural. He was bent over the
horse, moving up and down. It was just like the carpenter we sent away. I
couldn’t understand why Edmund would be buggering my horse right there, in
daylight, in front of the stables.

“I turned Sara round
and shouted at Edmund. And he didn’t say anything. He kept on buggering the
horse. Only, he wasn’t buggering the horse. There was all this blood. Her neck was
twisted to the side. I couldn’t…couldn’t make any sense of it. I walked up to
Edmund and grabbed him by the hair and pulled him away. And he went for me. By
God, he went for me! His face was bloody and he was hissing, and I’m not
ashamed to say I screamed. I tripped backward. Sara was screaming. Edmund
jumped on me and bit my calf, but I had my good riding boots. God bless
Margaret for those riding boots. The plague would have gotten me right there if
not for those boots.”

“So what happened?” Tristan
asks.

BOOK: The Scourge (Kindle Serial)
10.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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