Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

I leaped from my boulder and found myself crashing through bushes, plunging down the steep grade after them. My garments resisted the thorns and branches almost as well as chainmail. Then I was through and sprinted in the ravine.

Hounds bayed, and then came a terrible scream.

I drew my knife and burst into a glade. The woman stood at the end of it. She held her bow and sent an arrow at the pack baying to reach her. One hound dragged its hind legs, with an arrow in its side. She missed, coolly notched another arrow and sent it humming into a hound’s mouth. Then the twisted, elongated humans were upon her. They sank human-like teeth into her flesh. They punched, slapped and clawed. It was a horrifying performance. She fought back with a knife and wounded one. Then a hound ripped the knife from her. I expected it to stab flesh. Maybe the creature had forgotten how. Like wolves, they ravaged with teeth.

I shouted the Perugian war cry.

A human hound whirled around. I slashed. Smoke billowed from its face. Then I became like a lion among jackals. Teeth flashed at me. Fists and fingernails hit and cut. I thrust and hacked, and I realized my deathblade was exactly that. Each wound poured smoke. Each cut brought a howl from the twisted creatures. Soon I thrust my knife into the last one’s throat, heard it gurgle and hurled it off the woman.

A horn blared faintly in the distance. Could the others have heard the howls? Of course, they had heard. I knelt by the woman. She bled profusely from three bad bites. The worst poured blood like a maiden pouring water from a pitcher.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Her silvery garments told me she belonged to the Moon Lady.

“Shhh,” I said.

She groped for my hand. I took hers.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she whispered. Blood stained her teeth.

“Let me bind your wounds,” I said.

“Listen,” she pleaded. “I’m dying. I know it. I must complete my task.”

I nodded.

“You must return to the castle,” she whispered. “You must complete the ceremony and become the Darkling. Lorelei lied to you.”

What could I say to that? “I suspected as much,” I said. I wanted to ease the woman’s passing.

“The Lord of Night is cunning,” she whispered. “Erasmo has summoned Orlando Furioso, the black knight. You must beware the black knight. If you’re to survive, you must gain all your Darkling powers.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Return to the castle,” she pleaded.

She was a brave woman, had turned at bay and fought to the very last. I admired that.

“You cannot defeat Erasmo as you are,” she whispered. “He holds the Tower of the East. He-” She coughed blood, too much.

“Be at ease,” I said. “I will do as you ask.”

She looked at me with glazed eyes. Then she died. I brushed my palm across her eyes and closed them. I was sick of running like a frightened peasant. I wanted the hunter who had sent hounds after a young maid and who’d kicked Guido in the side. Signor Fangs for Teeth thought it a joke to fling rocks at my head.

I studied the grim tableau around me, arose and thought about Magi Filippo. It was time to set a trap of my own.

***

I waited in the boulders above the ravine. Riders came on fast. Through the trees, I heard the jangle of their equipment and saw the bob of lanterns. My coin grew heavy then.

“Hold!” a man shouted. His voice came through the foliage and the jangling sounds quit as horses whinnied.

Return to the castle. You must not risk capture, my Darkling .

“That way,” Signor Fangs for Teeth said. “He’s over there.”

I knew then that the hunter was a sorcerer, at least enough of one to sense when the Moon Lady communed with me and in what direction.

I took out the coin and whispered, “You’re giving me away.” Prudence stopped me from saying more.

I tucked away the coin and saw the lanterns approaching. They were supposed to have followed the hounds’ trail and to have found the slain moon maiden. While they examined the dead, I would have crept near enough to strike.

I slid from my perch and couched behind the boulder. I had the advantage of a steep and brambly slope. They could not ride their horses up it and I might possibly attack them one-by-one if they dared climb on foot.

I wondered if the Moon Lady knew the hunter could track through her coin, at least when she attempted to communicate with me. If she knew, then she was trying to scare me off. If she didn’t know, it meant the dark gods had limitations.

Like wild boars and with a great shaking of leaves, the band broke into the open. Dead-faced men rode in the van and in the back. Signor Fangs for Teeth was in the middle. He held up his hand. Riders drew rein and woodenly slid out swords. None bothered looking upslope, but waited like statues. I couldn’t decide if they were true dead men or under a wicked spell.

The hunter removed his wide-brimmed hat and mopped his forehead with a cloth. He fiddled with the crow’s feather, put on the hat and adjusted it to a rakish angle. Then he leaned forward, with both hands on the saddle’s pommel. Leather creaked as he peered up. I saw him smile and expose his signature fangs.

“It has been a good hunt.” He scanned the ridgeline. “But now my master wishes to see you, Darkling. It’s rather urgent.”

I crept from behind my boulder and eased behind brambles. Carefully, I began to descend down-slope.

“He prefers you intact, undamaged. But if you resist too frantically, we’re allowed….” His grin widened. “I shan’t say ‘kill you’, as that’s rather redundant. But I’m sure you understand the drift of my thoughts, signor. It’s said that once you were a gentleman of the highest quality.”

Something crackled down to my left. I peered intently. A dead-faced man crept uphill. I scanned the brambles. There were others. Oh, the hunter was clever. I hadn’t seen them dismount and slip into cover.

I heard a whine behind me uphill.

“Hsst, keep quiet,” a human hound growled.

“It’s odd living in the dark,” the hunter said. “The old ways, they die hard. Perhaps that is why I was at the bonfire with the flagellants. I remember before the change occurred-” The hunter shrugged, and he raised his voice. “Walk down like a gentleman, signor. It won’t be pleasant for you if I unleash the hounds.”

I drew my deathblade. I’d often practiced knife throwing as a squire and had attained a degree of skill. But to trust all on a single cast and possibly lose my deathblade, it was risky. Yet I remembered what had happened to the bondlings when I’d slain Magi Filippo. I slid farther down-slope.

“Here,” a hound howled from the ridge. “Here, here, here, he’s here, master.”

The hunter laughed triumphantly and reached into a saddlebag.

I slid down-slope faster yet. Then dead-faced men dismounted, five of them with swords. They formed a shield wall at the foot of the slope.

I stood up, about halfway down.

The hunter pulled his hand from the saddlebag and raised a thin stick. “You’re wise,” he said. “Now walk down into the lantern-light.”

“You made a mistake,” I said.

“If you mean Guido the hound,” he said, “it’s you who are mistaken. Once I learned of his treachery, others spiked his paws onto wood while I flayed him alive. It was an instructive time.”

I flipped my deathblade and caught it by the tip. “You not only live in the dark,” I said, “but the dark has flooded your soul.”

The hunter pinched the brim of his hat and tipped it. “Well spoken, signor. Now if you’d hurry, we have a long journey ahead of us.”

“Your mistake is in thinking this is a hunt,” I said.