Vaughn Heppner: Assassin of the Damned

I called out hoarsely. It didn’t matter. He or I shuffled toward the arch, toward the red glow that roared with a fierce fire. He shuffled toward what seemed certain doom.

A jolt woke me. My eyelids fluttered. I heard a creature snort. It sounded like a mule or a horse.

“Easy now,” a woman said. “It’s all right.” Leather snapped. Reins, I suppose. I had the feeling she wasn’t talking to me.

There was a second jolt and creaky wood. My body swayed, bumped about. Others bumped against me. Metal squealed below. These were wagon sounds. I cracked open an eye. I lay on someone. There were more bodies around me. None moved. They were dead.

Rage, fear and indignity battled within me.

A wheel lurched into a pothole. A dead hand rose and slapped my face. I dragged an arm free, the one pinned under a cold body.

“Mistress,” a heavy voiced man said. He sounded worried. I think he sat on the wagon’s buckboard.

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.

I waited for his answer, but got pregnant silence instead. My neck prickled. It was an overpowering sensation. I rolled aside. A club smashed flesh where my head had been. I opened my eyes. I lay on my back. Stars twinkled in the night sky. Leaves bordered the edges of my vision. A head appeared upside-down. The head had a bowl-cut of thick hair, vacant eyes and a mashed nose. His club rose into sight. I rolled the other way. The club thudded onto a skull that cracked.

“It’s fast,” he shouted.

“Kill it!” the woman screamed. “We can’t let it get away now.”

I flipped onto my belly and butted my head into the man’s stomach. He grunted, although his gut-muscles were stiff.

“Kill it!” the woman screamed.

The man flailed and the club thudded against the small of my back. His angle was bad, however. My chainmail and padding were good. I grappled with him. He was big, but so was I.

“Help!” he shouted. He had awful breath.

I wrapped my arms around his torso and jutted the top of my head against his chin. He beat at me. I laughed and tightened my hold so his ribs creaked.

“You’re killing him!” the woman screamed. “Let him go. Let him go.”

I let go, staggered back and shot a fist into his face. His head snapped back with a crack and he catapulted to the buckboard. He flipped over it, crashed against the pole connecting the wagon to the mules and flopped onto the ground. The wagon passed over him before the woman yanked the reins and shouted at the mules to stop. She lit off the wagon and ran to him. He twitched on the country road. Then he sighed heavily and seemed to deflate.

I jumped down with a jangle of noise.

The woman’s head snapped up as she stared at me. She wore a hooded smock and breeches like a man, with boots. She had a flat face with hard eyes and could have been a whore. She had the mercenary feel, a person who knew the underbelly of life. The law said that a whore, a harlot, was supposed to dangle a red cord from her shoulders. Where was hers?

“You killed him,” she said.

The force of my blow surprised me. “Why did you want him to kill me?” I growled.

She shook the man’s shoulder. I suppose to make sure he was truly dead. Then she eased away from him, away from me and jumped up. I took three quick strides and caught an arm. She squealed, whipped out a knife, a Venetian poniard . I slapped it out of her hand.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Ofelia. Please don’t kill me.”

Although she cowered, I caught her eyeing the knife lying on the road. I pulled her from it.

“How did I get in your wagon?” I asked.

“…Ox put you in.”

“Who?”

She indicated the dead man.

I scowled. “Why would he put me into a wagon full of corpses?”

She bit at her lower lip like a cat toying with a mouse. “We thought you were dead.”

“I’m not dead,” I snarled. “I’ve been ensorcelled.”

Ofelia cackled nervously and dared look up, with fear in her eyes. She had pockmarks around her mouth. “Can you blame us, signor? You have caked hair, a deathly pallor and many puncture-holes in your rusty armor. You even lacked a heartbeat, or none I could feel. You ought to be glad we didn’t bury you.”

I shook her harder. “You’d be dead if you’d tried to bury me.”

“Please, signor,” she whimpered. “Will you loosen your grip? I swear I won’t run away.”

I pushed her toward the wagon. “Why did Ox try to smash my head?”

She massaged her arm. “I pick up the dead, signor. I deliver them…to the magistrates. There’s a plague. But this you surely know. Sometimes we make mistakes. We pick up the dying. They’re going to be dead soon enough. Ox taps them, makes it easier on the suffering.”

“Who are these magistrates?” I asked.

Her eyes turned shifty. “You are a knight, I presume.”

I grunted.

“A knight or a luckless mercenary,” she said. “It matters not to me. With Ox gone I will need help unloading the bodies.” She jerked her chin at the wagon. “The wages are good-better than soldiering, I’d warrant.”

I scowled. Did she think me a fool?

“Look at your attire,” she said. “I suggest you forget about your chivalry, signor, and dirty your hands with some simple labor. I’ll pay you one hundred florins.”

The outrageous offer and her amazing gall stilled my retort. Ten florins would have been too much. She must believe as Cecco Angiolieri of Siena did when he wrote, “Florins are the best of kin.”

Blood brothers and cousins true,

Father, mother, sons, and daughters, too;

Kinfolk of the sort no one regrets,

Also horses, mules and beautiful dress.

The French and the Italians bow to them,

So do noblemen, knights, and learned men.

Florins clear your eyes and give you fires,

Turn to facts all your desires

And into all the world’s vast possibilities.

So no man say, I’m nobly born, if

He have not money. Let him say,

I was born like a mushroom in obscurity and wind .

“We’ll be at the castle in less than an hour,” Ofelia said. “With one hundred florins you can repair your mail, buy a sword, a chest plate, a horse and hire a courtesan. That will surely put the life into you.”

Her jest sharpened my suspicions. She did not react normally. None of this was normal. I wanted a sword so I could run it through Erasmo. His treachery had brought me to this perplexing state. I frowned, glanced at her wagon. Had I fallen along the side of a road earlier? What had happened to the man I’d been chasing?

“Why does the lord of the castle want corpses?” I asked.

“Lady,” she said.

“What?”

“She’s a lady, not a lord.”

I thought of the lady etched on my coin. I’d thought of her in my dream. “What is the lady’s name?”

“…She does not enjoy her name being bandied about,” Ofelia said. “You must ask her yourself, if you will be so good as to help me.”

“You have bold tongue,” I said, “especially for someone who just tried to murder me.”

“I told you it was a mistake. I’ll double the wage-I beg your pardon, signor. I am a lowly person. I will give you a gift of one hundred florins if you will help me. Or, if you prefer, you may consider this a chivalrous act. You slew my helper. Now I am in distress and I am a woman.”

“You’re taking his death easily enough,” I said.

“…For that you must thank the plague, signor. Death is everywhere.” Ofelia glanced at the dead lout and crossed herself in a haphazard fashion.

That angered me. “If the corpses are worth so much, maybe I’ll take your wagon and drive to the castle myself.”