Кейт Хартфилд - Armed in Her Fashion

Margriet de Vos peered at a horizon smudged with the smoke of small fires. She cursed her weak eyes. She was too nearsighted to discern a figure against that dirty yellow sky, even had a figure chosen that moment to appear, so she scowled at that blasted, merciless horizon.

It was not that she wanted Willem to return to Bruges, not exactly that. But she had a right to her husband, dead or alive. She had a right to his body, or the little money he earned through the work of that good-for-nothing body. If he was among the dead or captive or changed, she wanted to know. Three weeks now since the battle at Cassel, and so many of the men of Bruges were still among the missing.

Margriet squatted among the dry weeds and thistles, pulled up her skirts. There was no sound but the hiss of her own urine and the hum of insects. It was quiet here, in the no man’s land between the city walls and the Chatelaine’s besieging forces.

They were out there, somewhere, not far. An army from Hell itself, an army the likes of which could not be found in Christendom or in the imaginations of decent people.

But Margriet de Vos was not afraid. This was her city, and she would not be penned in it. Besides, her milk was failing, her dugs drying up, and she needed her herbs.

She stood and pulled her knife out of the pouch at her waist. Margriet kept her knife sharp. It snicked through the thick thistle stems, through their woolly insides. How strange that God had ordained that the nastiest plants would be the ones to swell a woman’s breasts with milk: the furry verbena, the stinging nettles, the sticking thistles. She wrapped her sleeve around her hand and placed the thistles in her apron, tied it deftly, and climbed out of the dry ditch.

The tea from these thistles would keep her milk up for a few more weeks, or so she hoped. And after that, what? Little Jacob Ooste hardly wanted the breast anymore, as much as Margriet tried to conceal that fact from his wealthy mother. But soon or late, Margriet would be unwanted.

There would be no work for a wet nurse in a city of widows.

Margriet’s legs complained as she began the short walk back to the city gate. She had spent too many of her days and nights sitting. The flesh hung softly on her bones and her back creaked. She stopped, frozen like prey before a predator.

Mary, Mother of God.

A dozen chimeras lounged by the tumbledown stone wall that bordered the cow-path, where it met the main road leading to the city gate. They were facing away from her. She could not see them in detail but one had a head three sizes too big, clad in an enormous beaked helmet despite the fact he wore no other armour. The others were all the same: each had one straight arm of black metal and one arm, disturbingly, that dangled thin as rope.

Chimeras. The Chatelaine’s unholy besieging army. Unnatural, misbegotten bullies, standing in her way.

A little dog circled the chimeras. The first dog she had seen in weeks; they were all dead, within the walls of Bruges. That’s right, keep sniffing around there, stupid creature. Keep your nose out of the wind.

A smell of ash and fire. Something like smoke rose from the little dog’s back: curls of dirty smoke or steam. It did not seem bothered. A chimera of some kind; a brazier with paws.

She crouched low, watching them through a screen of meadow foxtail. The chimeras were not facing her but they might have eyes anywhere, ears of any kind, senses not of God’s making. An odd sound seemed to be coming from them: an irregular, echoing knock.

They stood between her and the city walls. Her home and family lay on the other side of the Smedenpoort. She could try one of the city’s other gates, but that meant a long, leg-aching walk in either direction while the sun lowered. A dangerous walk, and undoubtedly full of more chimeras, and worse things.

At sunset the bells of Bruges would ring their tocsin, warning the living to stop their ears and harden their hearts. Then the revenants would come crawling, come calling. Up over the walls, the dead men who had lived in this city a month before would climb, uncaring what the living shot at them or poured down upon their heads. Into the streets they walked, batting away the few brave souls who fought them hand to hand, and calling the names of the living.

Margriet heard them every night. Every night she wondered whether she would hear Willem’s voice, calling her own name. Was he dead? Was he among the revenants?

She would not weaken. She would keep the door shut against him.

Her heart had been shut to him long before.

All the same, the revenants turned her stomach. She did not wish to be out when they were abroad.

This was her path, and Bruges her home, and by God no one would keep her from it.

She hitched up her skirt, the bulge of thistles wagging in her apron, and crawled like a child through the grasses, until she was close enough to hear, and to see a little better. Oh, what she would give for a pair of eyes as sharp as Willem’s.

The steaming dog lifted its head and looked in her direction. A man with metal and rope arms followed the dog’s gaze, looking out at the horizon just as she had.

“Is Hell ever coming back this way, then?” he grumbled.

“Who knows?” said another. “The Chatelaine has gone to meet the king at Ypres. Perhaps she will return after the city surrenders.”

The mouth of Hell might open anywhere now. Two years now since the Hellbeast had come to the surface of the earth, with the Chatelaine in command.

“This is only a test of the weapons, to frighten the people and see what we can do against the walls,” said a hollow voice; the man in the great helmet. “Not a full attack.”

A full attack.

Margriet chewed her lip. She had a secret way out of the city. She could get her daughter and leave—but that would mean leaving her father and sister behind, for there was no way her ailing father could travel and Katharina would never leave him. Neither would Margriet, if she could help it, but she must keep Beatrix safe.

Until now, the safest course had seemed to stay in Bruges, despite the siege, despite the nightly visits from the revenants. The walls were thick and the moat was deep. Bruges had starved before; its people would survive a long time on whatever tiny fish it could cull from the canals. And there were always rumours: that the survivors of the battle of Cassel were preparing to lift the siege, that the English king had chosen at last to come to save them.

No, it was impossible to leave Bruges. This was their home. How could Margriet and Beatrix live, out in a world infested with monsters? What would become of them as wandering women with little money and no home?

A full attack, said the man with the empty helmet.

It was a familiar voice, underneath the strange echo. How could it be familiar?

Once he had been a man; he had borne a head; he had given it up in the service of the Chatelaine. Had he lost it in battle? Was his head so ugly that he could not bear to live with it?

He lifted his visor. Behind it there was an empty space: empty, save for a little blue bird that fluttered and whizzed, a blur of colour that paused only when it banged into the inside of the helmet every few seconds. The bird seemed unable to find the egress although the visor was up. From its cage, from that void that should have been a head, issued his horribly empty voice.