Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (24 page)

Another crack sounds, followed by another squeal. The crowd cheers, wild and loud. And, like a demented echo, the plaguers by the gate howl.

Brian stops following and watches us. I pick up my pace, not quite running, but not walking either. Sir George and his soldiers hurry back down the crossroads toward the platform. The time for calm is past.

“Edward, what’s happening?” Morgan asks. “Say something.”

“Flee,” I say. “
Flee for your lives
!”

We flee for our lives, toward the gate.

 Another crack sounds in the distance, and I can only just hear the squeal. The plaguers near the gate roar and yank against their chains. They pull as one . . . and take a step forward.

“How. . . how are they . . .?” Morgan stammers.

“The log!” I stop running, halfway between the gate and the crowd. “They’re pulling it out!”

“They’re going mad!” Zhuri shouts. “Why are they going mad?”

A pig shrieks again and the plaguers howl, pull the log out another few inches.

All of us turn, at the same time, toward the platform, where the pigs are being flayed. We look at one another, then at the plaguers. The blood. The afflicted smell the pig blood.

I look again to the platform. The crowd cheers. Sir George and his men are still a long way off. I look back at the distant plaguers. They strain and roar and claw at the air. They seem to lurch forward again, but it is hard to tell from this distance.

“That log is sunk deep,” Morgan says. “There’s no way they’ll get—”

The faint, ringing sound of metal shattering silences him. Plaguers crash forward, tumbling over one another and onto the road.

They are free.

They rise like Hell’s vengeance and lumber toward us, picking up speed with each staggering step. I can just make out the glitter of a long chain dragging behind each one.

“The rusted ring,” Tristan says. “It’s a terrible weight to bear, always being right.”

“What do we do?” Zhuri asks.

I do not know what to do. We could avoid the plaguers. Race around them and escape in the madness that will soon fall upon Wickham Market. I think of Danbury, a village we doomed. One of my crowning sins.

“There are a hundred innocent men and women in this village,” I say.

“And four guilty pigs,” Tristan adds.

I think again of Danbury. If humanity is to survive, we must show ourselves to be human. I draw the hand cannon from my shoulder sack. Tristan watches, then draws his ten-shot hand bombard, the weapon named
God’s Love
.

“I thought you were the champion of the dead,” Tristan says.

“I am the defender of humanity, Tristan.”

I glance back toward the crossroads. Sir George and his men reach the platform. Brian Nottynge speaks to them and shouts something that I cannot hear.

I look back again toward the village gates. The afflicted stumble closer. Not more than fifty paces. A half-dozen soldiers from the long hall step out into the street. They stare wide-eyed at the afflicted, but do nothing to stop them. A knight wearing Richard’s crest on his tabard stands among them, watching as well. The cowards do not want the plaguers to turn their attentions toward them.

“This will be a misery of shit,” Tristan says.

“It always is,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I wish I had my helm.”

All of our helmets, and my shield, are in the canvas sack on Pantaleon’s donkey. Which is still by the platform.

We stand on the road, half-way between the village gate and the platform where the trial is taking place. Two hundred paces from each. Stranded between the afflicted and the healthy, fearing both.

I hand my cannon to Zhuri. “I hope you’ve gotten better with these.” Zhuri’s aim with hand cannons has been short of commendable. “It’s loaded. Aim for their legs. We want them stopped, not dead. These are people, not demons.”

Tristan hands Morgan his shoulder sack and the hand bombard. “Light a firing cord quickly.”

“I don’t want to fire a cannon,” Morgan replies.

“You don’t have a sword,” Tristan replies. “Be helpful. Fire the bloody cannon.”

“Christ is my sword.” Morgan takes the hand bombard and sighs. “If this gun explodes on me, I will haunt you forever, Tristan. I will make it rain on you for the rest of your days.”

“I live in England, Morgan.” Tristan draws his sword. “It’s already been arranged.”

Pantaleon steps up next to me, his own sword out, the massive steel pauldron on his shoulder facing the plaguers. “Perhaps Mayor will give to us the paid for help?”

“Everyone in this village is our enemy, Pantaleon. There will be no reward.”

I draw my sword, uncertain what I will do with it.

I am the wolf that slaughters the lamb.

But I can no longer tell the wolves from the lambs.

Chapter 28

The afflicted draw closer. I squint to get a better look at them. A man in rough linen trousers and no shirt limps at the front of the crowd. The white of a rib gleams from a bloody gash.

A girl of no more than twelve years walks just behind him and to his left. Her face is powdered black with dirt and grime, her lips drawn back in a snarl. Some lingering instinct from her healthier days makes her clutch at the hand of a woman beside her, but the woman yanks free each time.

Another woman in the marching throng wears a mesh caul that binds her hair. Through some oddity, the caul remains perfectly arranged, tidy on a head that has only one ear and massive gouges down both cheeks.

They lurch forward, all of them, along the tidy street and past the shining roses. A pair of pigeons coo and launch skyward at their approach, their wing beats like fluttering banners. I have faced more pitched battles in France than I can recall. Many times have I gazed upon the faces of my young enemies—at the humanity shining in their eyes—and felt a stirring of pity. To be born French is a curse, just as this plague is a curse to the afflicted. But the Frenchmen chose to take arms against us. The blighted enemies we face today never had that choice. There isn’t a dram of humanity in the eyes of the men and women that advance on us now. But I have never pitied an enemy so much.

I let out a long rattling breath. “Zhuri, Morgan, remember to aim for their feet.”

Morgan hands Zhuri a firing cord. “You’ll have to light me, Moor.”

Shouts rise up from behind us. I glance back. Sir George and his men are stopped on the road, fifty hundred paces from us. They have spotted the oncoming horde. One of the men crosses himself. Another places both hands on his helm. Sir George tugs at his surcoat and draws his sword.

Morgan steps forward and tips the bombard so the ten coin-sized holes point toward the plaguers’s legs. He nods to Zhuri, who dips the firing cord toward the touchhole at the top of the bombard.

“Say Hallelujah,” Tristan calls.

“Heavenly Father,” Morgan shouts, “please don’t let this cannon—”

Thunder sounds beside me. A streak of white smoke lances forward as
God’s Love
showers the plaguers. Screams rip through the mist of spent saltpeter, but I cannot see the people who make them.

I glance back. Sir George is on one knee. Most of his soldiers are hunched, or lying prone on the street. One of them is on hands and knees, arms cradling his head. They look more terrified at the gun blast than they did when they spotted the plaguers. I do not imagine many of them have seen a hand cannon at work.

The smoke lingers in the breezeless morning. White haze swirls and the woman with the caul staggers forward. Her hip gushes blood from where one of the ten gun stones pierced her. Bodies, just visible through the smoke, writhe upon the ground. Four or five of them. But dozens of plaguers are still on their feet. I hope Sir George decides to join us. We cannot hold off forty plaguers on our own.

The woman with the caul is five paces ahead of the throng and closing on us quickly. Her chain rattles along the earthen road.

“Put her down, Zhuri,” I shout.

“Very well,” he yells back, raising the hand-cannon. “You’re an ugly woman! And your caul is crooked!”

“Shut your mouth and fire.”

The Moor aims the hand cannon at the woman’s leg. Morgan dips the firing cord into the touchhole.

“Hallelujah!” Zhuri shouts.

The gun roars and belches a plume of smoke ten feet long. The road is smothered once again by a veil of white. We back away slowly, swords up, eyes straining into the bitter mist. Something moves toward us. The woman with the caul lurches out from the smoke. She has no new wounds.

“Zhuri!”

He glances at the hand cannon. “Something is wrong with this gun!”

“Yes,” Tristan replies. “It has a faulty Moor!”

“Forgive me.” The woman cannot understand my whispered words, but perhaps God will give her my message. I slash with all my strength. Saint Giles severs her leg just below the knee, and she topples to the ground, her chain clattering.

“Tighten up,” I say. “Don’t kill them if you can avoid it.”

Tristan and Pantaleon draw closer, so our shoulders touch. I take a deep breath.

“I wish I had my helm,” Tristan says again.

Sir George shouts at his men. Some of them stand and settle into a loose formation. Others back away.

We tense for the onslaught.

A crush of mindless humans—not demons, but sick humans—rush at us from the brimstone fog. They are like spiders from a web, the gossamer thread of chains dragging behind. Except they are not animals, either. They are humans. Not demons. Not animals.

But humans do not make the noises these things do. Humans do not hunger for blood. And humans fall when you cut at their legs. These things do not. I am reduced to swinging wildly, aiming for whatever is closest. I ask Christ to forgive me as I cut down the people I am sworn to defend. There are too many. We have no helmets, so we cannot risk being overrun. Nor can we allow these plaguers to wander into the village. We back away slowly, keeping the horde in front of us and taking them down however we can.

Tristan shoves an old man to the ground. “What . . . what now?”

“I was hoping . . . Sir George would arrive by now.” I lop off a man’s grasping hand. He wears a badge from the shrine of Saint Edmund. Elizabeth waits for me beside that shrine.

Father Peter’s words echo in my ears.

You would not slay a madman would you? Or an imbecile?

Pantaleon drops to a knee and severs a woman’s leg. She shrieks and clutches for the leg, then topples sideways. They do not seem to think, these plaguers, but they feel pain, as we do.

They must be protected and healed

Where is Sir George? Has he decided not to help? I cannot spare a glance backward.

Zhuri is hunched over, shaking his head and reloading my hand cannon. Morgan crouches low and drives his shoulder into the hip of a thin woman, sending her sprawling. He rises and thrusts his wooden cross at another plaguer. It hisses and backs away from him.

Tristan guts a young man whose face is mostly skull, the skin torn and rotted away. The man grabs Tristan’s arm with both of his and pulls himself forward. Bony jaws open. The sword rips through the plaguer’s back, but he continues forward. Tristan wrenches his arms back, but the man will not release his grip, will not stop his advance. Only the sword hilt stops the plaguer, but he is close enough to take hold of Tristan’s spaulder. He leans forward, jaws snapping at the metal plate.

I kick at the young man, but a naked woman lunges toward me. Her pendulous breasts are withered and swing like half-empty sacks of grain. I hack, two handed, at her throat, releasing a spume of black blood, but she does not relent. A man whose scalp is flapping upward follows behind, and I am forced to scramble back quickly.

They are not to be slaughtered.

Pantaleon is a fiend among the plaguers. He holds his short sword in one hand and dagger in the other. Whirling, stabbing, slashing and killing with many blood. He is a lion, and he roars as he sends an old woman to the dirt with a kick. “I will have the paid for this!”

Tristan groans. He has dropped to one knee and released his sword. The weapon is still lodged in the belly of the young man, who lies writhing on his side. Two others reach for Tristan, and he shoves them back.

I drive my sword through the naked woman’s throat. All the way through, then wrench it back and forth, until her spine severs and she falls to the road. The man with the flapping scalp staggers toward me. I hold him off with one hand, kicking at the side of his knee with all my strength. The leg snaps, and I am at Tristan’s side before the man’s body strikes the road.

Tristan wraps his arms around a stout man with a long beard and drives him into the earth. I grab the hair of the other plaguer—a farmer with boils sprouting from his neck. The blade of Saint Giles plunges into the back of his neck, and the farmer collapses with a gentle thump.

Humanity is the triumph of will over instinct.

Tristan pounds the bearded man in the face over and again with his fists, blood trails painting the arc of each blow. A stocky plaguer in chain mail dives at him, but I am quicker. I lunge at the man, and we both fall to the ground in a clatter of plates and a shiver of mail. The creature snarls and rolls onto one of my arms. I throw one leg over him to pin him down and use my free hand to drive the dagger toward his face. But the plaguer grabs my wrist. It shocks me. I have never seen a plaguer defend itself. A man and a woman leap at me. I try to pull my hand free to ward them off. But it takes an instant too long to break the plaguer’s grip. Blackened teeth lunge toward my face.