Twelfth Krampus Night (4 page)

Chapter Four

“Do you think he'll come for us?” The girl, Anna, was ten years old, as was her identical twin sister, Sarah. Both girls cowered in the corner of the family's one-room wattle-and-daub house, the cold and their nerves jiggling their blonde pigtails.

“He knows when Mother and Father go to the village—he counts on it,” Sarah said. They scrunched themselves into little balls, covering themselves with a big woolen blanket, their knees tucked under their chins. Waning daylight filtered through two small, shuttered windows, which both girls focused on, hoping his shadow wouldn't cut the sunlight.

“It's been a while since he last visited. Maybe he no longer fancies us,” Anna whispered. “We've been good girls, not told anyone about him.”

“Nobody would believe us anyway. Said he'd kill us. I believe him.”

“It's punishment—that's what it feels like to me,” Anna said.

“That's not the way he sees it. He
enjoys
it, laughs at our pain.”

“But why
us
? Of all the children who live in and around the village, why does he pick us?”

Sunlight flickered through the latched shutters, fast enough so that the girls couldn't tell if a bird or their imaginations caused it.

“How do you know we're the only ones?” Sarah pulled the wool up to the ridge of her nose so that only her blue eyes peeked above the blanket.

The knock on the door caused them to bounce on their bottoms.

“He
never
knocks,” Anna said.

Sarah knew it wasn't him either—he always opened the door, unannounced, and snatched them up one by one, leaving the other too terrified to help. Neither moved to answer the knock.

“Anna? Sarah? Are you in there?” came a grandmotherly voice.

“Who do we know who sounds like that?” Anna whispered to Sarah.

“You don't know me at all, but I know
you
,” the reply came cheerfully.

The girls stared at each other, each thinking,
How can she hear us?

“Or were you expecting someone else, my dearies? I think you'll prefer my company over anybody else's. I understand you're both good seamstresses, like your mother. I'd love to see your work.”

Anna swept the blanket aside and stood.

“
No
,” her sister pleaded.

“Maybe if he sees someone in here with us, he'll skip our house.”

Sarah thought about it and enthusiastically nodded yes.

Anna walked to the wooden door, which rested on hinges and had no lock. It took some effort for her to push it open and see standing outside an old woman holding a bucket and sack.

“Which one are you, little one?”

“I'm Anna.”

“May I please come in, Anna?”

He could be making his way through the woods now,
the girl thought.

“Please do.”

The old woman hobbled inside, nudging Anna aside. One lighted candle, centered on a small wooden table, lit the home. Straw had been strewn all over the floor. At night the girls' parents would bring in the family's milking cow so that it wouldn't get stolen, and because its body heat would help warm everyone where they huddled on the floor to sleep. Father slept with a dagger close by because he had built the thatched-roofed house—with the baron's permission—in the woods, away from the village's relative safety.

“That's a wonderful blanket, Sarah.” The old woman placed aside her belongings “Bring it here. May I please see it?”

Sarah rose and bunched up the scratchy blanket in her arms and brought it to the woman, who snapped it open to admire it.

“Did you both sew this?” She ran her hands over the blanket, admiring how tightly it'd been stitched.

“We took turns, yes,” Sarah said. “It's our first one without Mother's help.”

“And what a fine job your mother did teaching you.” She handed it back to Sarah and turned to Anna. “It's nearly dinnertime. Where are your parents?”

“Bringing fish back from the village. It won't take long to cook.”

“A fine choice to eat on Twelfth Night, would you agree?” the old woman extended her gnarled knuckles to Anna and gently stroked her cheek. “I have something for you.”

The old woman reached behind her back to retrieve a silver coin for Anna, who stepped back, not knowing what to expect. “I'll put this on the table for you.” She slapped it facedown, a loud clack reverberating off the wood. “And I've not forgotten about you, Sarah.” The old woman repeated the process, leaving two silver coins side by side for the girls.

“I'm very pleased with you both, how hard you worked this year on your first blanket. And I'm sure you'll be making more in the year ahead.”

“We've already started,” Anna said. “Each of us is working on our own.”

“That's what I like to hear.” The old woman's pleasant demeanor vanished. She looked around the room and shushed the girls when one appeared about to speak.

“Go sit in the corner, the way you were when I first got here. Take the blanket. Now.”

Anna and Sarah scampered to the corner and resumed their positions, now terrified because they too felt someone else's presence.

The old woman stooped and blew out the candle, and the girls lost sight of her.

The door was still open, but neither girl had seen her slip out. Sarah gasped when a large figure stood in the doorway.

“Didn't think I was going to arrive, did you?” came a male voice. “How could I pass up such an opportunity? I've been gone so long. I've arranged for your parents to be delayed in the village. They'll be none the wiser. Who would like to be first?”

Neither girl knew which of the baron's sons did unwanted things to them. He never gave his name, only orders to refer to him as “my lord”.

“I can never tell you apart, especially in this dark. How your parents do it mystifies me. I suppose parents know their children best. But it's still light enough out so that I can see what I'm doing.” He popped open the closed shutters to allow for a little more light. “So, who would like to take off her clothes first?”

The girls knew this was coming. Each wore a dirty cut-down tunic over a simple skirt. Anna began to cry.

The lord slipped off his leather gloves and laid them on the table. “I just want to hold one of you to start. Cuddle a bit. Make you feel nice and warm.”

He walked toward the girls, who turned toward each other and hugged, soon sobbing onto each other.

Just as the lord prepared to pounce, the shutters seemed to slam shut at once, followed by the door creaking back toward the house, sealing them into darkness.

The lord and the girls heard a soft cackle coming from the closed door, followed by “I think it goes without saying that you will
not
be getting a silver coin.”

He puffed out his chest. “I'm one of the lords of the castle. Leave this instant and speak nothing of this or I shall have you killed.”

“Is that so? Well, I'm not setting foot from this house for the foreseeable future, and when I do leave, I have every intention of informing the villagers of what a vile pervert you are. They'll never quite look at the baron the same way.”

The lord reached for his knife but realized he'd left it in his horse's saddlebag outside so as not to frighten the girls.

“What? A helpless old woman makes a statement of fact and your reaction is to grab a blade?”

Without thinking, the lord barreled his way forward, flipping over the table and breaking through the weak door. Wood splintered outward, spooking his horse tied to a tree. He freed his ride and charged through the woods to the main road, looking for his brother.

“Make sure you find your coins, dearies,” the old woman called to the quivering girls inside the home. “Now the hunt begins.”

The creature, crouching within a bramble patch—the last place the hunters, especially this prim and proper bunch, would dare tread—unfurled its parchment and glanced at a name that hadn't been stricken from the list. One of the men straddled a horse in the middle of the road, waiting for the rest of the hunting party to return. The beast reached behind its back and slowly drew from its barrel a chain, gingerly pulling it so the links would slink over the barrel's lip.

The lord clearly heard it.

That was part of the plan. Let the cretin hear a noise out of place within the woods. While technically not on the list—the creature knew not why—the marked man appeared long overdue for punishment.

Typically the brothers were never far from a knight for protection, but both considered themselves skilled fighters and keen bowmen. The lord circled his horse around the road, scanning the trees and bushes.

“Otto? Mathias? Are you there?”

“Yes, my lord.” Otto, followed by Victor and Mathias, galloped to meet him. “Your brother's not far behind us. He was looking for you.”

“As I was him. We all seem to get separated so easily. And I see we've not had any luck.” The lord saw no kills tied to the knights' horses.

The brothers reunited, and the five men trotted the trail up toward the castle, resigned they'd find nothing that day. Victor held up his hand to halt the procession.

“My lords, up ahead, two bears, eating a—Good
God
, that's Hans's horse.”

They lost all interest in hunting and charged the bears, chasing them into the forest. “Damn things should be hibernating.” Victor climbed off his horse and caught sight of Hans, gruesomely lashed to a tree by his own entrails.

Without being ordered, Otto dismounted and cut the last gut link tethering Hans to the tree. The intestine trail sickeningly unraveled. Otto roped the dead knight to his horse for the ride home.

“My lords, we must leave here, now,” said Otto, who, like Victor, remounted his steed. Mathias had drawn his crossbow and stayed close to the baron's sons, looking for any movement.

“I checked his horse. The saddlebags weren't touched. He still had his weapons,” Victor said. “Outright murder. This wasn't a robbery.”

Mathias swiveled on his horse and spotted something in the brambles.

“We're being watched, my lords. Move.” A thick iron chain exploded from the brambles, smashing Mathias's face, crushing his nose into his skull, penetrating brain, killing him. The chain snapped back into the woods just as Mathias hit the ground.

The brothers drew their longbows and fired a succession of arrows from whence came the chain. Otto, fearless, jumped off his horse and unsheathed his broadsword, waited for the lords to stop firing and immediately hacked into the brambles.

A man screamed from behind them. Otto and the lords turned and gasped when they saw Victor's stomach gushing blood onto his panicked horse's saddle. An old woman in black straddled the horse from behind Victor, holding one wrinkly hand over the knight's forehead while removing a dagger from the man's belly with the other. She lithely pushed herself off the horse and scurried into the forest. Victor fell and hit the ground while trying to push his innards back inside his body.

A furious roar nearly knocked the lords off their horses and forced Otto to step back from the brambles. He spotted an animal's furry face, unlike any he'd ever seen: black, beady eyes that looked strangely human but couldn't be; and a mashed, crooked nose and mouth, out of which sprang curved yellow teeth. And the putrid smell!

“Ride!” Fear cracked Otto's voice as he remounted his horse, waiting for his masters to bolt ahead of him.

One lord galloped away while the second prepared to follow, but before he could, the old woman jumped from the woods, landing in front of the horse and letting forth an ear-splitting screech, causing the animal to rear high on its hind legs. As it did, the woman drew two curved blades from behind her back and swiftly slit a bloody
X
on the horse's belly. The animal's scream prickled the lord's hair. The lord thought quickly, and instead of tumbling, pushed himself off the horse and landed on his feet as the beast collapsed forward and onto the ground, writhing in pain along with Victor. The lord ran to Otto, placed both hands on Hans's back and propelled himself upward to sit behind Otto and
on
the dead knight. Otto's horse ran for its life.

The old woman stowed her weapons and scrambled into the woods to chase the lords and knight.

The thing that had roared at Otto rose from the brambles and strode into the road near the dying horse and Victor, who had stopped squirming and rested on his side as offal oozed through his fingers. He looked up to see a horned monster holding a chain in one hand and a strange bundle of sticks, wielded like a club, in the other.

“You've been good, Herr Knight, but nothing can save your life now—only end your misery.” It lifted a cloven hoof, balancing itself on the other, and crushed Victor's head, offering him a surprisingly quick death.

It took two stomps to kill the horse.

Chapter Five

Although Beate Klothilda had been to the Vettelberg Castle earlier that day with Heinrich, she'd previously visited the palace only a handful of times, mostly with Gisela—she considered her friend a superior seamstress and always would—to help sell her wares to visiting nobles or castle workers. But even during those few precious times, she had been relegated to a meager, hastily erected tent fronting the inner curtain walls that protected the great hall and keep—never had she been inside to see its true grandeur.

“The baron is spending the conclusion of Twelfth Night in upper Bavaria,” said Mumfred, the castle steward who led Beate along the outer courtyard's cobblestone path to the inner castle's gatehouse. “It's actually fortuitous that he is. Otherwise the castle would be a madhouse of baking, planning for festivities and so forth. Meaning we'd have to keep an eye on you to make sure nothing goes missing.”

Beate caught a glimpse of Heinrich balling his fists. She squeezed his forearm to calm him.

She knew not to escalate things. “I can assure you nothing of the sort will happen.”

Mumfred led the group, including two squires on the verge of knighthood, to the inner gatehouse's entrance, where guards began lifting its smaller but no less imposing portcullis.

Beate took the moment to feast upon the gothic castle's size. The four outer curtain walls, constructed of gray stone and mortar, loomed ninety feet over anyone who approached the castle—after somehow traversing the moat oozing around its perimeter.

Those four walls, each four hundred feet long and topped with battlements, formed a square, with one-hundred-and-twenty-feet-tall rectangular, spire-topped bastions serving as the castle's corners. Guards, looking outward and down the mountain, paced the wall walks. Standing at an inner curtain wall base, Beate gazed upward, spotting two guards looking down at her. They too stood atop a ninety-feet-tall wall. However, the four walls on which they were perched measured two hundred feet long—creating a small fortress encased by a larger one. And even though the inner and outer walls stood the same height if placed side by side, the inner structures, because they were built on a taller point on the mountain, rose higher.

“Remove your dagger.” Mumfred pleasantly extended his hand to Heinrich. “I'm surprised our squires didn't think to ask you first.”

Mumfred smirked at the two blushing boys—for that's all they were—who shot embarrassed glances at each other.

“I suppose that's why they're still squires.” Mumfred accepted the sheathed weapon and performed impromptu pat-downs on both Heinrich and Beate. “I believe Otto already did this, but one can never be too careful.”

Mumfred noticed Heinrich's displeasure as he took his time frisking Beate.

“Now you know why I took this from you.” He jiggled the dagger. “The porter shall return this to you when you leave. Follow me.”

As they walked, Mumfred directed the peasants to view a cluster of small, square apartments constructed in stone against an outer curtain wall's interior side.

“You've already passed the seamstress's quarters. I'm not sure which it is, but she lives—or used to—in one of them. Perhaps if you please the baroness with your work—because, really, decisions of this nature are hers to make—you can dwell there.”

Beate dreamed of one day living in the castle full time, sewing exotic materials into clothes for its master. But that dream died upon meeting Mumfred.

“Or I could continue to live in the village.” She smiled at the steward, making sure he noticed.

“A village life over one in a castle?” Mumfred dismissed the idea with a grunt. “You jest.”

“Me? Jesting?” She said it innocently. “No, I'm certain the castle already has a fool.”

Heinrich and the two squires fought to suppress laughter. Mumfred furrowed his brow. “Just because you're a guest of one of the baron's sons doesn't mean you're under the boy's protection.
I
run the castle when the baron's not here. Do you understand me?”

Beate held her tongue and curtsied.

“Whatever. Come.” Mumfred waved them to follow. “Seeing that we cannot expect either of the two lords to set foot into the seamstress's dwelling, you'll be sizing them in their sleeping quarters within the solar.”

Beate's heart fluttered upon entering the inner courtyard. People from miles away could see the bergfried's churn tower, but to see it now, jutting more than one hundred and seventy five feet in the air.

“We'll be going up there?” She marveled at the circular tower's four bartizans, each with a conical top. Those four outposts encircled a tower, smaller in diameter, that served as the entire structure's spire.

Mumfred chuckled. “Silly girl, that's the tower of last resort. I don't expect barbarian hordes to mount a siege while the baron is away, but that's where he'd be if one happened. Knowing the baron, he'd go down fighting. No, the baron and his family live in a palas in one of the lower, separate structures.” He pointed to what Beate had never accurately seen from outside the castle: an ornate five-story building with several curved archways and windows fronting the bergfried.

“That's where you'll find the main hall and solar, and the baron's sons—eventually,” Mumfred said. “And that's where we're going for your meal.”

They were about to enter when Otto's booming voice caused them to turn.

“Raise it, raise the damn thing now.” It came from a distance away.

“He means the front gatehouse. Follow me, no straying.” Mumfred led the way to the outer courtyard and the main entrance, where the gate began rising.

Knights rushed the wall walks from above and pointed through the battlements to two horses galloping toward the lowered drawbridge. The animals, pushed to their limits by their masters, practically ripped wood from the bridge as they crossed into the castle.

Everyone dismounted. Wilhelm and Karl stood next to each other underneath the spiked gate and drew their bows, waiting for whatever had ruthlessly attacked three knights and two horses to appear. Archers atop the castle walls likewise aimed long and crossbows.

The commotion stirred Heinrich, Beate, Mumfred, the squires and numerous other castle denizens to linger behind the lords, soon filling the archway with gawkers.

Unknown to everyone, two sets of eyes bored through the dense woods. An old woman stayed in the forest to the right of the path leading to the castle, and a monster hid within the fauna to the road's left.

Otto took control. “My lords, lower your bows, get inside the castle, now.” He then stood on the drawbridge's hinges, making sure everyone inside the castle could see him. “Now step back!”

Nobody argued with the giant knight. They backtracked as Otto menacingly marched forward to hammer home the point. Once he was safely out of range of the spikes: “Lower the gate, raise the drawbridge!”

Everyone milling behind the descending gate heard from within the woods what sounded like a man and a woman arguing—loudly—followed by metal clashing against metal, then two distinct beings howling and screeching at each other.

Beate hugged Heinrich, who watched the closed gate and drawbridge as if there was still something to see outside.

“Love.” She waited for him to meet her eyes. “I think we're staying here tonight.”