Paul Finch - Dark North

Lucan had seen it. As he’d descended to the courtyard, he’d trudged through the smoking, semi-liquefied husks, among fragments of burned tentacles which could do no more now than twitch feebly.

He understood how this had happened. But why ?

Urgol’s scornful voice brought him out of his reverie. “Well… if it isn’t another warrior of Christ. Here to collect souls for his master.” The woodwose bared his fangs. “I go one better… I collect souls for myself!”

His club crashed down, and Lucan had to duck aside. He hefted Heaven’s Messenger, but it was nothing more now than a cindered cross-hilt. He threw it away, casting around for another weapon. The pole-axe stood in the foot of the shaven-headed bravo he’d slain earlier; he yanked it free and dodged as another massive club-stroke was aimed at him.

Trelawna watched the combat, terrified.

Urgol struck again. Lucan parried, the impact jolting his body with nauseating force.

“Not yourself, sir knight?” the woodwose rumbled. “What would the Lord say?”

Lucan responded by kicking at the club to try and dislodge it, and slamming the pole-axe haft down on Urgol’s naked foot. Urgol took a step backward, but then lurched in with another overhead buffet, which again almost knocked Lucan from his feet. They circled each other warily. The only sound in the castle yard was the heavy rasp of their breath, the scuffing of their feet, the crash of steel on timber.

Lucan still had the deadlier weapon, but the extra weight of Urgol’s club, with his mammoth strength, was telling. When the woodwose set about him in a flurry, it was all he could do to fend off three blows, before taking the fourth — a huge thrust — in the chest, hurling him off balance. He slashed back with the axe-head, but the woodwose smashed it aside and threw a ham-fisted punch. It caught Lucan square on the cheekbone and rang his skull like a bell.

Lucan hit the ground hard, but retained just enough of his faculties to roll away. The woodwose followed, club raised, so he kept on rolling, blow after blow striking clanking concussions from the flagstones. And then a corpse — another of Lucan’s victims from earlier — barred his way, and Urgol caught up and stood astride him. This final blow would have pulverised Lucan’s face, had he not heaved the pole-axe to the horizontal, fists gripping its haft one to either end.

With a massive CRACK , the axe-haft shattered, but the blow was absorbed. Lucan kicked upward, couching his mailed foot in the leather-clad sack between the woodwose’s thighs. Urgol doubled over and staggered back, and Lucan again rolled away. The beast swung around in pursuit. Lucan tried to stand but slid in a puddle; again he rolled. Urgol followed sluggishly. Even should the knight get to his feet in time, he had no weapon — there was nothing with which to fight back.

“Lucan!” came a desperate voice. “Lucan!”

Lucan glanced to his left. Though Rufio lay prone, his face the colour of slate, both legs twisted at awful angles, there was something in his outstretched palm — a gladius .

“Take it…” he gasped.

Lucan scuttled forward, snatched the blade and veered to one side as the mighty club sailed down after him. It hit Rufio full on the forehead, crushing his entire skull to mulch. But the knight was now, at last, on his feet; he twirled, gladius in hand.

Urgol came with a roar. The club descended in a blur, but Lucan spun from its path. As he did, he cut down, carving deep into the woodwose’s thigh.

Its bellow of rage became a howl of anguish.

Lucan continued to spin around the beast, and then he was fast on its back, his arm locked around its brawny neck. With a single thrust, he drove the gladius deep to the left of its spine, twisting it to a chorus of cracking vertebrae.

Urgol’s eyes rolled white, and a spume of blood burst from his mouth.

“My Lord would say,” Lucan hissed into his ear, “consider yourself collected!”

The woodwose gave a faint mewling sound as it crumpled into a lifeless heap. Seconds passed as Lucan stood over it, every muscle taut, his body rank with the stench of sweat and blood, and yet so doused by rainwater that steam rose off him. Slowly, stiffly, he looked around him. No-one else in the castle yard was alive except Trelawna, who sat where he’d last seen her, head slumped to her breast.

When he finally limped towards her, she glanced up and regarded him with a strange indifference. Though still a beauty, her eyes were bleak holes in a face made haggard. Her expression didn’t change when she glanced down at his drawn gladius — not until he tucked it into this belt, and she spotted the ragged scarf knotted around its hilt, and a strange mirthless smile came to her lips.

Duchess Zalmyra watched these events from the driving-bench of her coach, every terrible incident playing out in the green scrying-orb. Now it was over, and she was impassive. The death of her son, Rufio, meant no more to her than the death of her servant, Urgol; in fact, it probably meant less. Rufio had been a failure, a weakling — like his father before him, unfit to head the Malconi clan. His fate had been the same, and was equally deserved.

Zalmyra touched her belly before taking up the reins. She was still ripe enough to produce more sons. All she needed do was entice a strapping young man, and she had never had a problem with that before.

She lashed the team of horses away.

Lucan knelt beside Alaric’s splayed corpse, and after straightening his limbs and planting a kiss on the young man’s alabaster brow, laid the sodden wolfskin over him. At the same time, Trelawna crawled to the broken form of Gerta. The old nursemaid was pale, but at least unmarked. Like Alaric, she looked as if she was sleeping.

Very softly, Trelawna wept. Minutes passed, in which the autumn chill leached into their bones.

“Quite a refuge you chose,” Lucan finally said, “the Malconi clan.”

Trelawna wiped away her tears. “Gerta said the same. If only I’d listened…”

“Gerta was your voice of wisdom. Alaric was mine. We both chose to ignore them.”

“Then we both should have died.”

Lucan glanced towards the high parapet, which was still wreathed in acrid smoke from the lightning strike. Again, he felt only fear and confusion. “For some reason… it was God’s decision that we shouldn’t.”

Trelawna wept again, and at last he moved across and joined her, placing an awkward hand on her shoulder, which he was grateful that she didn’t shrug away.

“So what now?” she sniffled. “We go home… we realise we love each other after all… and these many deaths are forgotten?”

“No,” he said. “We just go home.”

Duchess Zalmyra made good speed along the canyon road, her tawny furs billowing as she drove the black coach at full force, her whip cracking on the horses’ flanks. Not far to the east, another thunderhead was rolling over the jagged mountaintops. She must clear the ridge-way before the next storm struck. Not that this had prevented her halting briefly in the canyon to apply her green-orbed wand to the skull of the black warhorse tethered there, causing such pain inside its head that it shrieked and bucked and hurled itself against the canyon walls until it had smashed its own bones and torn its flesh to unrecognisable pulp.

Once on the exposed ridge, her own horses became skittish. She whipped them all the harder. Though it would have been more prudent to walk along the knife-edge track, they all but galloped. The carriage jolted and bounced. The duchess cut her tawny robe loose, and freed her hair to blow behind her in a rippling, blue-black plume. She struck and struck at the horses’ foaming, bloody flanks, screaming curses. And then, to her astonishment and dismay, she spotted an obstacle ahead, and was forced to rein the frantic brutes in. It took her fifty yards to stop, the horses puffing and sweating.