Tales of the Old World (6 page)

“Put the wind up you?”

“Aye, my lord,” nodded Havelock, appearing more reluctant to continue. “Once
she’d finished, you was raving for the whole night, shouting about Morr’s gate
and… well… how you had to get back to Athel Loren to save her…”

Leofric lay back down on the bed, well able to imagine how his ravings must
have appeared to one who knew that his wife was dead.

“But anyway,” continued Havelock. “Whatever it was she did seems to have
worked, eh?”

“So it would appear,” agreed Leofric, sitting upright again as another
thought occurred to him. “Two days? The undead? Is there any sign of them?”

“No,” said Havelock. “We got away from them. I think Aeneor would have outrun
Glorfinial himself.”

“Aeneor!” cried Leofric.

Havelock held up a hand and said, “He’s fine. I took care of him myself. He’s
a tough old beast that one, the hard muscles of his chest kept the spear from
going too deep. He’ll have a nasty scar to show off, but he’ll live.”

Relieved beyond words, Leofric swung his legs from the bed and said, “My
thanks, Havelock, you have done me proud. I’ll not forget this. Nor the kindness
of the peasants of… actually, where are we?”

“Ah…” said Havelock. “Funny you should ask that.”

“Funny?” said Leofric. “Funny how?”

Havelock was spared from answering by the arrival of another man at the door,
his build powerful and his bearing martial. Dressed in the rough clothing of a
huntsman, he carried a quiver of arrows over his shoulder and had a long bladed
sword partially concealed beneath his hooded cloak. Beneath his peaked and
feathered hunter’s cap, his face was rakishly handsome and Leofric saw a glint
of mischief there that he instantly disliked.

“Who are you?” asked Leofric. “And where am I?”

The man smiled. “My name is Carlomax and you are in the Free Peasant Republic
of Derrevin Libre.”

Leofric sat on the wall on the edge of the village, his breath coming in
shallow gasps as he walked the circumference of the village to regain his
strength. He wore his armour, for a knight of Bretonnia had to be able to fight
in his armour as though it weighed nothing at all, though he felt very far from
such fitness.

The blade of the undead champion had wounded him grievously, and despite the
healing power of this village’s fay woman, it was going to take time for his
strength to fully return. He set off again, feeling stronger with each step and
casting an eye around the village of Derrevin Libre.

Two score buildings of a reddish orange wattle and daub comprised the
village, though at its centre stood a largely dismantled stone building that
must once have belonged to the noble lord of this village. Only the nobles of
Bretonnia were permitted to use stone in their dwellings, but such laws
obviously held no sway in this place as Leofric watched gangs of peasants
chipping away the mortar and ferrying the stone to the ground via a complicated
series of block and tackle.

A tall palisade wall of logs with sharpened tops formed a defensive wall
around the village and Leofric knew that this was higher and stronger than most
villages could hope for. Having climbed to the top of the wall earlier, he had
seen a bare swathe of the forest where the logs had come from and knew that the
revolting peasants had put their brief time of freedom to good use in preparing
for the inevitable counterattack. Hooded Herrimaults with longbows patrolled the
walls and land beyond the village, alert and ready for the attack from the local
lords that must surely come soon.

The village was thronged with laughing peasants and Leofric found the effect
quite unsettling. Men and women worked in the fields beyond the walls and
children played in the earthen streets, chasing hoops of cane or teasing the
local dogs. The villages Leofric remembered from Quenelles were a far cry from
Derrevin Libre, their peasants surly and hunched with their faces to the soil.

The sun was hot and he could feel his skin reddening, though he had refused
Havelock’s offer of a hooded Herrimault cloak, seeing it as an acceptance of
what had happened here. The few people he encountered in his slow circuit of the
village were amiable, if wary of him, as they had good right to be. For Leofric
represented exactly what they had rebelled against six months ago.

Leofric still found it hard to believe that a peasant revolt had managed to
survive this long, but if there was anywhere it could do so, it was the
fractious dukedom of Aquitaine. He did not know the names of the local lords,
but knew it was only a matter of time until they came with fire and sword and
put an end to this futile dream of freedom. Strangely, the thought of the status
quo being restored here did not give him as much comfort as he expected it
would. People would die and the ringleader of this revolution would be hanged.

Speaking of the ringleaders, he saw Carlomax, the charismatic Herrimault who
appeared to be the self-appointed leader of this revolt walking towards him, a
longbow clutched in one hand, while his other hand gripped the hilt of his
sword.

“Mind if I walk with you?” asked Carlomax.

“Do I have a choice?” asked Leofric.

“This is Derrevin Libre,” smiled Carlomax. “Everyone has a choice.”

“Did the local lord have a choice before your little revolution killed him?”

Carlomax’s lips pursed and Leofric saw him bite back a retort before his easy
composure reasserted itself. “You are angry with me, yet I have done nothing to
you, sir knight.”

“You are a revolutionary, that is enough to make me angry.”

“A revolutionary?” said Carlomax. “Yes, I suppose I am. But if I am, then I
fight for honour and justice, that is the true revolution here.”

“Honour and justice now includes murder does it?” spat Leofric.

Again Carlomax struggled to stay calm, and said, “If you’ll allow me to show
you something, I think you might change your mind.”

“Show me what?”

“Come,” said Carlomax, indicating that Leofric should follow him. “It’s
easier if you see it first.”

The ice room of the former lord of Derrevin Libre was dug deep into the
earth, far below ground level, and as Leofric descended the stairs he relished
the drop in temperature after the heat of the day. A compact room of rough-hewn
stone blocks, there was, of course, no ice left, but it was still nevertheless
pleasantly cool though the shelves were empty of meat and vegetables as he might
have expected.

In fact the room was empty save for the bloated shape of the corpse concealed
beneath a large blanket. Despite the cool air, the stench was appalling and
Leofric was forced to cover his nose and mouth to keep it at bay.

“You kept the body?” said Leofric, aghast. “Why?”

“You’ll see,” promised Carlomax. “Take a look.”

Against his better judgement Leofric approached the covered body, keeping one
hand pressed over his mouth as Carlomax took hold of the blanket and pulled it
back to reveal the dead body beneath.

Leofric dropped to his knees at the horror that was revealed, his stomach
turning in loops as he fought to prevent himself from vomiting. The body was
that of a man, but a man so bloated and repellent that Leofric could barely
believe such a thing was human. Sagging folds of flab hung slackly from the
man’s frame, his skin discoloured and ruptured in numerous places, each long
gash encrusted with filth and dried pustules. The man had clearly been diseased
and he backed away lest some contagion remained in the rotted flesh.

“You need to burn this,” said Leofric. “It has become rank with corruption.”

“No,” said Carlomax. “The body has not changed since we killed him.”

Leofric looked back at the repulsive corpse and said, “Impossible. The body
has rotted from within.”

“I swear to you, Leofric, that this is exactly how this… thing was put here.
Look at his arms, he was a worshipper of the Dark Gods.”

Leofric was loath to look again at the horrendous sight, but bent once again
to the body. His eyes roamed the purulent, flabby arms, at last seeing what
Carlomax was referring to. All along the length of the man’s arms were a regular
series of blisters, each formed in a triangular pattern of three adjoining
circles. Each cluster was arranged in the same pattern.

“I have seen this before,” said Leofric.

“You have? Where?”

“I fought alongside the king at the great battle against the northern tribes
at the foot of the Ulricsberg. I saw this symbol painted on the banners and
carved into the flesh of the warriors who worshipped the Dark God of pestilence
and decay.”

Carlomax made the sign the protective horns as Leofric saw that many of the
open wounds on the man’s body had more than a hint of mouth to them, some even
having twisted vestigial teeth and gums protruding from the grey meat of the
body.

“The man was an altered,” said Carlomax. “He deserved to die.”

Leofric nodded. The mutating power of Chaos had warped the dead man’s flesh
into this morbidly repulsive form for some unguessable purpose and the horror of
it sickened him.

The power of Chaos was a foulness that infected the minds of the weak with
promises of easy power and immortality, but it inevitably led to corruption and
death, though such a fate never seemed to deter others from believing they could
master it.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said, turning and marching up the stairs. He needed to
be out of that foetid darkness and away from the disgusting vision of the
mutated corpse. He emerged into the sunlight, taking a deep breath of fresh air
and feeling his head clear almost instantly as he moved away from the building.

“You see now why this happened?” asked Carlomax, following Leofric back into
the daylight above.

Leofric nodded, but said, “It won’t make any difference though.”

Carlomax shook his head. “It has to. When people see what happened here and
why, justice will prevail.”

“Justice?”

“Yes, justice,” snapped Carlomax. “That is the code of the
Herrimaults, to uphold justice where the law has failed and to reject the dark
gods and to fight against them at all times.”

“The Herrimaults truly have a code of honour?”

“We do,” said Carlomax defiantly.

“Tell me of it,” said Leofric.

As the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky, Leofric sat on the edge of
the palisade wall looking out over the surrounding lands, his thoughts confused
and uncertain. When he had first heard of Derrevin Libre, he had been horrified
at the upsetting of the natural order of things and branded the Herrimaults as
little better than brigands, but the day spent with Carlomax had disabused him
of that notion.

The man’s brother had been hung for smiling at a noble’s daughter and his
mother crippled by a beating for weeping at the execution. Small wonder he had
turned to the life of an outlaw.

Carlomax had told him how he had later abducted the noble’s daughter,
intending to rape and torture her, but had found that he had not the stomach for
such vileness, and had released her unharmed.

How much of that story was true, he didn’t know for sure, but Carlomax had an
integrity to him that Leofric had quickly recognised and despite his initial
misgivings, he found he believed the man. The code of the Herrimaults had
impressed him, its tenets not unfamiliar to a knight such as he; to protect the
innocent, to uphold justice, to be true to your fellows and to fight the powers
of Chaos wherever they are found.

Following such a code, Carlomax might himself have been a knight were it not
for his low birth. And from what Leofric had seen around Derrevin Libre, he
couldn’t argue that Carlomax had created a functioning society for its people
that was superior to the lot of the majority of Bretonnian peasants.

The night’s darkness was absolute and Leofric knew that come the morning he
and Havelock would ride to the city of Aquitaine itself to warn the duke of the
threat gathering in the north of his lands.

Filled with such gloomy thoughts, Leofric did not hear Havelock approach, his
squire appearing absurdly cheerful, though he was not surprised. To another
peasant, Derrevin Libre must seem like paradise and Leofric found that he could
not find it in himself to disagree.

“You should get some sleep, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow and you
still haven’t got your strength back yet… my lord,” said Havelock and Leofric
couldn’t help but notice the tiniest hesitation before he had added “my lord”.

“I know,” said Leofric.

Havelock nodded, suddenly awkward and Leofric said, “Do you want to stay
here, Havelock? In the village, I mean?”

His squire frowned and shook his head. “No, my lord. Why would I want to do
such a thing?”

Leofric was surprised and said, “I thought you admired the Herrimaults?”

“I do, my lord,” agreed Havelock. “But I swore an oath to you and I plan on
honouring that. It’s nice here, don’t get me wrong, but…”

“But what?”

“But it won’t last,” whispered Havelock sadly. “You know it and I know
it. When the local lords finally get over whatever feuds are keeping them busy,
they’ll come in force and burn this place to the ground. Can’t have the peasants
believing that there might be other ways of life than the one they’re born to,
eh? Tell me I’m wrong.”

Leofric shook his head. “No, you’re not wrong. I just wish the notions that
underpin the knightly code and the Herrimaults’ code could be put into practice
beyond the conduct of a single knight or outlaw.”

“Well, it’s a noble dream, my lord, but we live in the real world, don’t we?”

Leofric said, “That we do, Havelock, that we do. Here, help me up.”

Havelock pulled Leofric to his feet, the pair of them freezing as a chorus of
wolf howls echoed through the darkness.

Leofric’s gaze was drawn to the edge of the forest as he heard new sounds
beyond that of the howling wolves, the tramp of feet and the crack of snapping
branches as armed warriors marched through the trees.