Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

At that laugh without mirth the woman dropped her bundle and fled.

“Vafres!” Through the neatly-pared holes in his mask, Sigebert’s eyes now showed sparkling and merry. “I’ve raised quarry at last! The master teaches his servant how to ply his trade! Now I shall have sport!”

He laughed again and tugged off one glove to thrust two fingers into his mouth. Whistling up the hounds who came happily and hopefully, he bayed them on the peasant woman’s track.

Already she had run far down the winding forest path, racing desperately with her skirt about her hips. Blue-veined legs churned, greybrown with dirt. Doubtless she thought she’d set eyes on that monster Satan, spoke of by the priests.

By the time Sigebert’s pack was well started, she had emerged from the wood and fled across the cleared ground bordering her village. No need had she of a backward glance; her ears told her what pursued. The hounds of Hell!

Without hesitation she legged it across the fields, a pathetically ludicrous figure that took a wide ditch in a leap to land running on harshly knotted calves. Yonder lay the houses and the small stone church. All were stoutly built, as they had to be for fear of beasts and robbers. Her own house stood nearest. Her heart pounded and her feet pattered and she thought that surely she could reach it. She’d no time to cosset such weaknessess as the pounding of her heart, the rawness of her throat and the beginning burn in her calves. She shrieked her man’s name as she ran.

Behind her streamed dogs and riders, black mask on tall black horse. The man shouted and laughed maniacally; the dogs bayed and slavered, loping.

Outside the quarry’s hut, in the shade of its projecting thatch weighted at the corners of cord-wrapped stones, her man sat fitting a new handle to a reaping hook. He heard her scream, call his name. At first the dull fellow had not recognized the mortal fear in her voice, but took it for shrewishness. When she screamed to him again, and then again, and he heard those other sounds, he lifted his head, much irked. Then he simply gaped.

His wife, whom he oft berated for her slow movements, was running like the wind toward him. Behind her flowed a river of black and brindle hounds, amid a hellish clamour. And behind them galloped a horseman on a tall jet steed, riding as if he owned the world. His rich black cloak flapped about him and streamed like a hellish banner. This man the peasant had never seen afore. He did not have to know him or of him. He knew the kind.

His wife drew close enough for her man to see her bulging eyes, the gape of her mouth and straining cords of her throat as she sucked for air. He stood frozen, staring. She staggered and her arms windmilled and she recovered and came on. The hounds were thirty paces behind her and loping, running faster than she and closing the distance.

They came like the wind itself, and the wind came from Hell. Now the peasant could hear the ragged whistle of his wife’s breath. He calculated distance…

He moved at last.

Handle and reaping hook dropped, apart. He darted into the hut and slammed the door with all his strength, literally in her face. Her nails clawed splinters from the rough wood she’d helped him hew from a great tree. She was hurled back by the impact and her nose and mouth were bloody. Even her shriek emerged as a bubbling moaning cry.

Sigebert’s baying hounds loped and leaped and covered her from sight and the noise was hideous.

Cathula had been working in the fields when terror came riding across them. Like her father, the girl of not-quite fifteen stood frozen and appalled for a long time, staring at her fleeing mother and the chasers. When Cathula acted, it was in a very different fashion from her father. He had seen the choice: aid his wife and die with her; hold open the door for her and slam it-and be dragged out to die with her, or try to save himself. He had opted for pragmatism. The peasant was beyond emotion.

Scrambling out of the ditch whose sides she had been trimming with a hoe, Cathula ran fleetly toward the awful scene by the hut. The hoe came with her, clamped in a grimy hand become a vise.

“Mother! Mother, NO!”

Sigebert saw her coming. Under the mask, his brows rose. With a smile on his mouth, he urged his mount between Cathula and the snarling yapping raging pack.

The girl did not hesitate. Squinting up at him where he towered over her, she planted her feet and snapped her other hand onto the hoe’s handle. She swung it thus, like an ax, with the determined purpose of imbedding the blade in his head.

The leather mask moved urgently aside. Sigebert felt and heard the hoe’s edge hiss past the one ear that remained to him. The handle struck his shoulder so hard that the wooden stave broke, and the iron blade fell harmlessly away on a short stick. Before the astonished Frank had recovered himself, Cathula was spitting fury and thrusting at his belly with the splintered end of her hoe handle.

The thing gashed his forearm ere Sigebert gained a grip on the crude spear.

He pressed his knees hard to the black horse’s flanks, and Sigebert’s thighs and calves bunched with the musculature of any accustomed rider who had many times remained mounted only through the use of those sinews. Dragging Cathula close, he caught her by the arms. He managed to haul her across the saddle before him without toppling from it himself. Was no easy task, with the girl fighting him frenziedly and squealing the while. The horse whickered nervously. The broken hoe handle fell to the ground. Still smiling, Sigebert seized his captive’s brown hair, which hung in oily sheaves through being dirty. He struck her in the throat in such a way that she had to end resistance and fight for breath. Her eyes bulged and she made gasping choking sounds; airless sounds.

Sigebert dragged her up to set astride his horse, dragging her hands behind her back and high between her shoulder blades in a relentless double lock. She was strong and coming on fifteen; Sigebert was at prime male strength.

“Now-bitch-do you but watch! ”

Little there was to watch, now. His savage dogs had made short work of their ghastly task. Vafres beat them away from their shredded, disjointed kill. Their jowls ran scarlet. At sight of what remained of her mother, Cathula made a sick mewling sound and shut her eyes. Her tiny belly lurched.

“Vomit over my leggings and I’ll impale you on that hoe handle,” Sigebert told her. He bent this way and that to run his gaze appraisingly over his catch.

The brown hair might have been a lot cleaner. So might her tight young skin, and mud from the ditch blackened her feet. Still, the pressure of her taut backside was most pleasant and her rucked-up skirt displayed enticing legs, and her body was better.

“Not bad,” Sigebert muttered, to none but himself. “She may even prove pretty, once she has been cleansed.” And he added in a mutter, “-and de-loused. Vafres!” He tossed a purse to the huntsman. “Coax that quivering coward out of its hovel and give it a gold piece for its offspring, here. Nay, stay!” He laughed in a burst, as at a fine jest. “Nay, give him thirty silver ones instead! That is more appropriate for a betrayer! Then follow me on the road. I return to Nantes forthwith.”

No longer did the Frank sound petulantly harsh. High good humour fair shone from him. As for the possibility that Vafres might take the purse and flee in another direction, Sigebert never considered it. How would such as Vafres explain his possessing so much money? Besides, even with such resources he lacked the personal resource to try.

Cathula had ceased her struggles. She stared at the blank, unrevealing wood of her home’s door-her father’s door, barred from within-and her eyes were blue ice. Slowly she turned her head toward the village church. There stood a spare figure in black, silent and unmoving. The black horse passed him by at a walk, and the priest of the cross said naught.