Mark Teppo - Sinner - A Prequel to the Mongoliad

He had grown up in this forest. As a child, Otto had hunted rabbits along the band of white ash that grew along the track of the old river. He remembered the last time the wash filled with water, during the unseasonably wet spring in 1226. His uncle, Heinrich, had lost two dozen cattle in the deluge of water that had come pouring out of the trees. For weeks after, he and the other boys had found all manner of treasures buried in the dark silt carried down from the mountains by the floods: shards of earthen pottery, scraps of leather, bits of metal rounded by their long journey. Dierk, the largest of the boys, had found a piece of a broken blade, one of the old swords used by the Romans. They had even found a woman’s arm, battered and torn, wedged among the tangled roots of an ancient oak that had been torn up by the waters. Dierk had thought it belonged to Elsa, a local girl who had vanished during the flood. Perhaps she had been out here, among the trees, with another boy that night when the waters had come.

Or perhaps it had been something else. Something darker. Something evil.

Something like whatever was chasing him.

Otto fled through the woods, and it was as if the trees had moved since the last time he had been in the forest’s embrace. The familiar paths-traveled so frequently they belonged to him as much as to the animals-were hidden from him tonight, even with the assistance of the full moon. It hung, snared, in the spindly and jagged branches of the trees, whose limbs strained and reached for the shining circle like eager children begging their mothers to lift them up. He saw no animals and heard nothing but the shuddering beat of his heart loud in his ears.

When he did hear an echo in the forest, it was the sound of pursuit. They had been chasing him since he stepped out of the inn to piss. At first he thought they were dogs that belonged to someone local, but then he caught sight of one of them, crossing the field opposite the inn. He wiped at his eyes, sure he had had too much ale to drink, but the apparition didn’t disappear. It came closer, prancing in the moonlight, and his bravery fled at the sight of the ash-whitened skin.

The next village was a half-day’s journey upriver. Mainz was so far away that it might as well have been the Holy Land. He didn’t know where he was going, and it didn’t matter. As long as he ran away from them.

He didn’t know how many were chasing him, nor did he want to stop and find out. As a boy, his uncle Heinrich had told him stories of the ghost hunt-the spirits of damned hunters unable to ascend to Heaven until they caught the Devil, but they had been hunting the cloven-hoofed one for so long that they had forgotten who they were, and they were nothing more than vengeful spirits who preyed on sinners. They could smell the Devil’s taint, the corruption that took root in the soul when a man sinned against God.

He prayed to God when he could manage enough breath to spare for prayer. What have I done, Lord? How have I offended you?

A rock turned beneath his foot, and he sprawled on the ground. His elbow banged against the heavy root of a tree, and he curled into a ball on the ground, whimpering as pain lanced up his arm and into his shoulder.

Something dashed through the brush nearby and he froze, his whimper dying in his throat. There had been a flash of white moonlight reflecting off pale skin, and when the second one passed, he clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle his cry of terror at what he saw.

The third one did not run past like the first two. It crouched in the shadow of a nearby tree, and he could hear its ragged breathing. He stared at the dark shape, trying to pierce the darkness with his gaze while simultaneously praying that what he had seen was not true. The creature in the darkness made a guttural noise. His mind refused to accept that what he was hearing was laughter, and that it was coming from a human throat.

He scrambled backward, and the shadowy figure leaped forward, grabbing at his trailing leg with an outstretched hand. As soon as its grip latched onto his ankle, he started screaming and kicking. The figure laughed, fighting to snare both his legs, and his cries of terror brought the other two back. They loomed over him, faces that he knew but that were distorted and pale in the moonlight. There was blood and dirt on their faces, and their lips were white with ash.

“No!” Otto begged. “Do you not know me?”

The man holding his legs was a goatherd he knew by sight but not by name. The woman kneeling on his right arm worked in the inn; she had served him just the other night. But there was no recognition in her face now. Her eyes were wild and black.

He tried to shove her off, but the third one, a burly man with an old scar that twisted his lips, caught his flailing arm. He tried to pull free, but the broad-chested man gripped his wrist and slowly pried his fist open. As he watched, unable to believe what he was seeing, the man bit down on his index finger, right around the second knuckle. He screamed as teeth grated against bone, and the man shook his head violently. The other two shrieked with delight as the man wrenched his head back, taking a finger with him.

“Please,” Otto sobbed. “Please, God. Help me.” Blood squirted from the ravaged end of his finger, and the woman eagerly grabbed at his injured hand, licking and slurping at his bloody stump.

“God cannot hear you.” The voice came from the trees, and he recoiled at the sound of human speech. He struggled beneath the threesome, who crouched reverently at the voice while still maintaining their hold on their captive.

Moonlight fell across a robed figure as it approached. The figure wore a misshapen hood, complete with a leather mask and a crown of twisted vines. “God is afraid of the night,” the figure said, his voice a dry rattle in the darkness. “He is afraid of what lives in these woods. What has always lived in these woods. Your God has fled, and we are all that remain.”

As if these words were permission, the three fell on their captive. Their hands tearing; their teeth biting.

It was hard to tell who thought they were more important: the horse or its rider. The horse, a black destrier with a swath of white down its throat, walked with such a precise and high-stepping gait that it was nearly prancing, though judging from the imperious lift of its head, it would never deign to do something as undignified as prancing . Its rider was a priest in a dun-colored robe beneath a dark blue cloak-which seemed to Andreas to be one layer too many. The man’s face was clean-shaven, and his tonsure was so white that he appeared to be crowned with a halo that slipped down across his skull. His eyes were blue, like the Northern seas, and they appeared to miss little. They locked onto Andreas as the not-quite prancing horse came abreast of the itinerant knight, and Andreas, always eager to practice his humility, dipped his head.

The horse snorted, shat (much to the dismay of the rider directly following), and continued on. Andreas stared at the steaming pile in the narrow lane and quietly counted the eight riders following the priest as they carefully avoided the freshly dropped equine offering. Andreas scratched his cheek absently after the party had passed, wishing once again that he hadn’t lost his own horse in a wager.

It had been a fine animal, though a bit temperamental when the weather turned. It had rained most of last week, and the beast had been feisty enough that he had, in a moment of weakness, offered it up in a wager with a pair of Frankish mercenaries. Andreas suspected the pair had cheated, but as the crowd had become overwhelmingly filled with friends of the Franks, he had thought it prudent to let the matter lie.