Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

I debated backtracking and circling around the swamp altogether. Strange, beastly groans echoed among the trees together with the angry hisses of what could only be crocodiles.

Then my crust of ground gave way into a fetid pool of quicksand and I found myself hip deep in it. I waded through the morass, using my fist to break apart the deceptive ground. Unfortunately, I concentrated too much upon that and sank into a hidden hole. It angered me, and I continued to plow through until my head broke the surface some time later. It was good that I didn’t need to breathe.

I found a slimy pool and waded into it, cleaning off the quicksand. I’d found throughout the weeks that my Darkling garments were not only tough, but they dried quickly and remained relatively clean if rinsed of mud and gore.

It was then I heard distant shouts, that of men or altered men. With this hateful mist, it was difficult to pinpoint exactly where the sounds originated, although they were ahead of me.

I recalled the cavalry troop I’d seen earlier. Surely neither side wished to fight a night-battle in this poisonous land. And yet, if the so-called rebels wished to besiege the Tower of the East, they had to hack their way through the swamp. It would take soldiers and a commander of extraordinary stubbornness and determination to try. Yet after living through the horror of goat-men and human hounds, the rebels might well have grown bitter enough.

Even though I wasn’t a knight-errant, it behooved me to aid the rebels. Who else marched against Erasmo and dared draw their swords against the old powers of Darkness? The rebellious army forced Erasmo to act against them. To slip into the Tower of the East, I might need such a distraction. But if Erasmo’s soldiers destroyed the human army, he could use all his altered men to hunt for me.

I hurried through the jungle, headed toward the sounds. In time, I discovered unmistakable signs of an army: trampled areas, torn branches and half-covered latrines.

I slunk from tree to tree and often paused to listen. I didn’t want to blunder into Erasmo’s troops. Soon, I heard new sounds. That was…chopping, sawing and hammering. It came from straight ahead. No, it came from my left.

I brushed aside flowering creepers, barely dodged lashing vines. The woody groans of the predatory tree as it leaned toward me convinced me such a plant had never originated on Earth. Or was it a sorcerous experiment? The whitening bones of a large snake lay at the base of the tree.

After I bypassed that, I heard voices mingled among the carpenter sounds. Intrigued and thoroughly sick of this mist, I climbed a large frond tree and saw an amazing sight.

Maybe the many busy bodies disturbed the mist, for it was thinner ahead. It gave the scene a ghostly quality, as if the workers had marched into a land of limbo. Pages and other youths held torches. Beside them, sweaty men swung axes or sawed. Many of the felled trees lay half-submerged in muck. Peasants sloshed around them as they stripped off creepers, fungi and chopped off the branches. Others dragged the branches into piles. There boys selected the right kind of branches, soaked them in tar barrels and readied more torches.

A tree crashed as I watched. Its thump sent up a spray of filthy water. The men worked like ants. Carpenters swung axes into the felled trees and then pushed wedges into the cracks. Big men with mallets drove the wedges deep into the cracks and split the trunks lengthways. That was repeated many times until they had long, crude boards, most with bark on one edge. Those boards were sawed into sections, into planks.

In the middle of all the activity lay the reason for the endless work. Wagons hitched with mules trundled over a plank causeway. Peasants hefted hay bales from the wagons and tossed them onto muddy soil or into shallow puddles. Over that, others laid the planks side-by-side, while others tied the planks together. Huntsmen prowled the outer works with mastiffs.

The causeway twisted back toward the west like a writhing snake. It disappeared into the distance, although I spied a wooden stockade, a hastily built affair. Bonfires burned there, near stacks of planks. Maybe they tried to dry them. Crossbowmen walked the ramparts, and that made me believe the captain-general of this army stored supplies there.

The causeway was wide enough for four knights charging in a row, which made it huge. The expense in planks was prodigious. The amount of labor…the time and men needed…this was proof of deadly intent. The desperate night-work implied a need for speed. Surely the swamp boiled with activity during the day.

The sight earlier of Erasmo’s cavalry troop troubled me now more than ever. They hadn’t seemed like altered men, but knights. That suggested Orlando Furioso, likely the best captain in Erasmo’s service. Yes. If I were Erasmo, I’d order my soldiers to attack at night.

I dropped down from the frond tree and slunk nearer the causeway. Ahead of the road, men hacked a path.

I glided through the mist, threaded east in the direction the road headed, and I reached a large open area. Soldiers burned fires there. They had chopped down jungle trees to give themselves a wider perimeter and to give the enemy low-lying obstacles. Anything that attacked would have to charge across the felled trees and across open ground. To add to their defenses, crossbowmen and knights waited behind a circle of mantelets. A mantelet was a siege shield, a big thing normally moved forward by three or more men and set into place. In a sense, here in the swamp, each mantelet was part of a portable wall.

The crossbowmen had placed stands behind the mantelet, stands to give them height so they could shoot down from their wall.

I watched from the trees and estimated nearly one hundred men-arms. That was more than a sizeable guard. I grinned, for I spied Carlo da Canale. With his size, big red beard and loud English accent he was unmistakable.

I hailed him. Immediately, over a dozen crossbowmen trained their weapons in my direction. Soldiers roared orders. A trumpet blared.

“Who calls my name?” Da Canale shouted.

“Do you recall the goat-men?” I shouted. “And how I helped you?”

“Paolo Orsini?” he shouted, using the false name I’d given him.

“Don’t fire!” I stepped out of the tree line. As I did, I heard low growls that sounded suspiciously like human hounds. The sounds emanated from the trees to my left.

If the hounds had charged, I have no doubt the crossbowmen would have feathered all of us with bolts. But I suspected the hounds were scouts for Erasmo’s army, not suicidal creatures.

“I recognize him,” Da Canale told the others. He disappeared behind the mantelets. Men pried one aside, and Carlo da Canale of the White Company stepped out of the fort. He came alone, about thirty feet from the wooden wall. And as before, he shook my hand. He did it so those behind the mantelets could see. This time, he studied my features much too closely.

I lifted an eyebrow.

“I do not mean to be rude, signor. But now I remember where I’ve seen you before. It was in Tuscany, in Avernus, another evil swamp. Do you recall the time?”

I nodded reluctantly.

“You seemed then like one of the living dead. You dodged a crossbow bolt with unnatural ease and you took another in the chest. Then you killed the man who should have killed you. He was a good soldier, a brave lad from York.”

“I regret his death,” I said.

“You freed Magi Filippo.”

“I killed him later.”

Da Canale plucked at his bushy beard. “Ofelia tells a different story.”

“Have you noticed that her stories often lack such simple things like the truth?”

He nodded gravely.

“Altered hounds watch your camp,” I said.