Vaughn Heppner - Assassin of the Damned

Many of the workers already streamed toward the stockade. They must have fled at the sound of battle. Their footsteps drummed with frantic haste on the laid-down planks.

The axe-men hesitated. They were brave, but I knew they could not stand up against the altered berserks.

“I can’t go on,” Da Canale gasped.

I glanced east into the mist. Wild cries came out of it. I glanced west at those pounding down the causeway. Despite this lull, there was about to be a slaughter. I sensed it. So I dragged da Canale off the causeway and past the many tree stumps. We crashed through heavy foliage and wet leaves.

“Down,” I hissed.

Da Canale collapsed and gasped for air. I knelt and peered past a frond back at the ground we’d just covered. Incredibly, some of the axe-men yet waited.

Then the mist vomited Signor Orlando and his thirty knights. They galloped at the axe-men. Beastly men holding crackling torches ran with the knights. The knights lowered their lances. Their huge war-horses thundered upon the muddy ground. A horn blared. It was too much. The axe-men turned and ran. Most dropped their weapons. Two who stood their ground died as lances split their chests like melons.

It was murder, not war, and I understood now the reason for the lull. It had no doubt taken time for Orlando to work his way through the dark army.

The knights charged the workers running for the stockade. Crazed altered men followed hard on their heels and butchered any they caught.

Beside me, an exhausted da Canale wept silently.

It galled me to have flee. It shamed me. But I was the Darkling, not a knight-errant. I had vowed to become ruthless like an assassin. Now I practiced ruthlessness and it left a foul taste in my soul.

***

I watched the best I could, but mist drifted in the way, the stockade was a goodly distance and I remained crouched. I only saw a little of what occurred but could surmise the rest.

The knights led the charge. Thirty trained killers encased in heavy armor, astride massive steeds and with the best lances and swords in the world, they rode through the workers like the living embodiment of the plague. I suspect only the first workers to flee made it to the stockade.

If the crossbowmen I’d seen walking the ramparts earlier had opened the gate for those survivors, those in the fort would have quickly died. Enemy knights might have dismounted and run through before the gate closed, or altered men would have done so. The stockade held. That told me the crossbowmen had either thrown down ropes or left the pitiful survivors to their own courage.

The wooden walls would protect the crossbowmen from the crocodiles and from the knights on horse. Were any of the possessed left? How long would they remain berserk?

Screams, metallic bangs and roared orders told me the fight was in earnest over there.

“I’m going to climb a tree and see how they fare,” I whispered.

Da Canale put a trembling hand on my arm. He pointed to my right.

I squinted into the misty foliage. Something large moved over there. How had da Canale sensed it and I hadn’t? We waited, and we witnessed apprentice sorcerers with whistles leading hissing crocodiles. The giant creatures trotted in their obscene manner and they followed like dogs. The sorcerers plunged into the foliage all around the clearing and in various directions. It made me suspect they laid a trap. Or maybe they hunted for me.

“We must try to slip out of here,” I whispered.

Da Canale turned a horrified face toward me. “They broke into the stockade,” he whispered. “Listen.”

A ferocious ‘Hurrah’ echoed through the swamp. It was a victorious sound. Had the possessed leaped onto the ramparts? Had those vile altered men clawed their way upward in the hail of crossbow fire?

Smoke chugged into the starry sky. Fires grew and soon threatened to set the swamp on fire. Yet that seemed unlikely. The enemy burned the stockade and probably burned the laboriously gathered planks. The swamp itself was too wet to burn.

In time, Orlando’s knights cantered past. Their helmets rested on their saddle pommels. The sweaty-faced killers jested with each other. They laughed and bragged about their deeds. In the rear rode Orlando Furioso. He yet wore his helmet, although he had sheathed Durendal.

One of the knights turned and asked, “Here, signor?”

Orlando waved them on beyond the causeway, toward the hacked-out trail.

By almost leaning out of my hiding spot, I saw several of the knights dismount. The hidden crocodiles and now the knights waiting-

Altered men began to arrive from the stockade. Many bore crossbow wounds. Some dripped with blood. Some gnawed on severed body parts. Like the knights, they bragged about their exploits, even the human hounds with bloody faces.

In the distance, through the jungle, sounded approaching horns.

Da Canale lifted his head, and he gripped my forearm. “Reinforcements come,” he whispered. “They’ll butcher these curs.”

“The enemy is setting a trap,” I whispered.

Da Canale stared at me. Some of the fear that had gripped him earlier had drained away. “We must warn them, signor.”

“And have Ofelia demand my capture?” I asked.

Da Canale murmured something vague, a promise, I suppose. Yet he was right. I had to warn them.

“You must move as quietly as possible,” I said.

He grinned at me in a ghastly manner. “I was a childhood thief, signor. It’s how I survived London’s bitter winters. Lead on, I can follow.”

A thief and a Darkling, we were a matched pair.

***

We made a wide circuit, too wide as it turned out. And we, or I, misjudged the reinforcements.

Naturally, they marched on the causeway. They advanced like a human snake, a long winding column of knights, men-at-arms and crossbowmen. I suspect the plan had been to feed the reinforcements into the advance guard where da Canale had begun the evening. One hundred men-at-arms behind mantelets should have been able to hold off three or four times their numbers. My mistake was in thinking Signor Hawkwood knew his trade. I had heard of him, and da Canale loved to bray about the captain-general’s exploits. I would have sent footmen first, a shield-wall of footmen and with others to carry torches and lanterns for light.

Signor Hawkwood sent the knights first. Perhaps he did not have a choice. I’ll grant him that. Even among some mercenaries, the privilege of nobility held sway. Most knights demanded the place of honor in battle-the front. Signor Hawkwood was a mercenary, an Englishman. Many in his host were the knights of Milan, Bologna and other Lombard cities. Despite his protests, they might have shoved their way to the fore.

It meant knights on horses led, and knights on horses usually advanced faster than footmen. There was my miscalculation. By the sounds of their original horns, I’d thought I had enough time to circle wide and reach them before they blundered into the trap.

The sounds of battle told me otherwise, the crash of armored knights as their bodies clanked against sod, the loud and painful neigh of huge war-horses as crocodiles broke their legs. The shrill whistles of sorcerers, human hounds baying bloodlust and the weirdly sea-like cries of octo-men meant the enemy had closed the trap.

“Run!” I shouted at da Canale.

Then I did. Leaves slapped at me and branches tried to claw off my cloak. Soon trees were a blur of motion. Our circuit had been wide. My run took time. Finally, I burst onto a chaotic scene. The stockade roared with flame and gave both hosts all the light they needed. Giant flickering shadows however and charred and roasting corpses in the crackling stockade played havoc on superstitious men.

Some Lombard knights yet remained on horse. They must have fought their way out of the trap and reached the van of those on foot. Unfortunately, those knights were a pitiful few. Fortunately, they had turned to fight. They battled Orlando’s knights or they died as Orlando hewed with his witch-glowing Durendal. Altered men fought to the right and left of Orlando and his knights. They faced desperate men-at-arms in a contest of push and shove and hack and stab.