Abomination (14 page)

“So you are the one who led this war against me,” said Aethelred from the altar. “Murdered my children, rent my family asunder. Sir Wulfric the Wild.”

How does he know my name?

“Your children?” Wulfric responded with disgust. “Those innocent men and women you corrupted and enslaved?” But Aethelred seemed not to hear him, lost in his own demented reverie.

“No one understands vengeance better than God,” the archbishop said finally. A vulpine grin spread across his face, revealing a mouthful of crooked and rotting teeth. “That is why he smiles upon its cause. I have grown weak, but I made sure to retain what little of my power remains, in hopes that you would be the first to find me. To get
close
enough. And now, here you are. Delivered unto me.”

It was then that Wulfric noticed the parchment strewn across the altar next to Aethelred. Page upon page of handwritten scrawl in a language he could not comprehend, and did not at first recognize. And then he remembered where he had seen such writing before—in the transcriptions of Aethelred’s scrolls that Cuthbert had made from memory in his effort to perfect his protective counterspells. Wulfric knew that the papers on the altar could not be the original scrolls, as Alfred had assured him they had all been destroyed. So what, then, were they? He saw then that the ink on the topmost sheet was fresh, saw the quill resting nearby. Wulfric grabbed the parchment with his free hand and held it up before Aethelred.

“What is this?” he demanded angrily.
“What is it?”

Aethelred sneered, but did not answer. He no longer met Wulfric’s eyes, but was looking at something lower, on his chest. The archbishop’s gaze was focused on the silver scarab pendant that hung from Wulfric’s neck.

“Perfect,” whispered Aethelred with a broadening grin. And then, with surprising speed, he thrust his right hand upward and slammed it hard against Wulfric’s breastplate, fingers splayed wide,
palm covering the medallion and pressing it against Wulfric’s armor. Wulfric grabbed Aethelred’s wrist and tried to pry the hand free, but it would not budge; the seemingly decrepit old man was far stronger than he appeared.

Aethelred glared up at Wulfric with a withering, white-hot hatred. He pressed his hand harder against Wulfric’s chest and began to mutter something under his breath. It was foreign and unintelligible to Wulfric, but he knew it immediately to be a magickal incantation. He felt his chest growing uncomfortably warm, and looked down to see that his breastplate had begun to glow beneath Aethelred’s palm. To his horror, he realized that Aethelred was burning through his armor. The archbishop’s hand had become brighter and hotter than a blacksmith’s forge, and Wulfric’s breastplate was turning molten around it as Aethelred pressed more firmly, his hand sinking into the hammered metal.

Wulfric cried out when he felt the flesh beneath his armor begin to burn. He could think of nothing else but to plunge his sword down, into Aethelred’s throat. Blood bubbled up from the widening wound as the blade sank into it, but Aethelred still muttered in that infernal language, his voice now an empty hiss, spitting each word at Wulfric like it was venom and plunging his hand deeper, clean through Wulfric’s melting armor and directly onto the flesh beneath.

Wulfric’s cries echoed around the cathedral’s stone walls. The burning was agony. In desperation, he retracted his sword and brought the blade back down lengthways across Aethelred’s neck, pushing down, severing tendon and muscle until it cleaved clean through the archbishop’s flesh and his head came off and rolled away, over the altar’s edge and onto the stone floor.

Only then did the archbishop’s strength finally leave him, allowing Wulfric to at last pry loose the hand from his chest. Aethelred’s body fell away lifelessly and hit the floor in a crumpled heap. But although he had freed himself, Wulfric’s breastplate was still white-hot and burning his skin. Dropping his sword, he tried
desperately to unbuckle the armor, just as Edgard burst through the door at the far end of the nave, a force of men at his back, Cuthbert among them. Edgard saw Wulfric writhing in apparent distress and rushed to his aid, helping to unfasten the straps that held the breastplate in place before pulling it free—the metal so hot it burned his hands as he did so—and tossing it to the ground, smoke still rising from the molten gash in the shape of a handprint that Aethelred had left.

Wulfric’s legs gave way beneath him and he slumped to the floor with the altar at his back, gasping. Edgard knelt before him and gave him water to drink as Cuthbert surveyed his wound. The tunic Wulfric wore beneath his breastplate had also been burned through, revealing a ghastly scar of blackened flesh in the center of his chest, as though he had been branded there with a hot iron. On closer inspection, Cuthbert noticed that the shape of the burn, like none that he had ever seen, uncannily resembled the shape of a scarab beetle.

“This burn is severe. It must be treated immediately,” he said.

“I’ll fetch someone,” said Edgard, and he stood urgently to leave.

“No,” replied Wulfric with as much strength as he still had. “It is but a burn. I’ll live. See to the other wounded first.”

Edgard nodded, then took a moment to survey the scene. The melted breastplate. The sheets of parchment strewn across the floor. Aethelred’s crumpled body and, several feet from it, his head.

“What in God’s name happened here?” he asked.

Wulfric just closed his eyes, exhausted. Even if he had possessed the strength to try to explain, he would have had no idea where to begin.

Wulfric stood in the cloister and watched Aethelred burn. His men had made a pyre of wood, hoisted the headless body atop it, and set
it ablaze—soon there would be nothing left of the archbishop but ashes consigned to the wind. The head had already been burned, separately, its charred remains given to a rider to scatter a mile away. Wulfric was taking no chances with this man, even in death.

As he watched the flames lick Aethelred’s blackening body, his hand played across the dressing placed over the burn on his chest. The salve that had been applied did little to quiet the painful throbbing beneath. Worse, his scarab pendant, one of the few material things he valued, had been lost, melted into nothing; all that remained was the curiously shaped brand that Aethelred’s hand had seared into his flesh.

Cuthbert emerged from the nave door. He clutched a sheaf of the parchments gathered from the altar inside and was studying them as he approached Wulfric. Each page seemed to cause him more puzzlement than the last. He looked up in time to see Wulfric draw his hand self-consciously away from the wound on his breast.

“Are you quite sure that’s all right?” Cuthbert asked.

“It is nothing,” said Wulfric, his attention fixed firmly on the papers Cuthbert held. “What have you learned?”

“It’s curious,” said Cuthbert as he sifted through the pages. “This is the language of the scrolls, but what I see here did not appear in any of them. I would remember. The archbishop was not simply transcribing what he already knew—this is his own original work. I believe he was attempting to further his understanding and command of the magick he had learned, to develop it to a higher, more advanced level.”

“To what end?”

“That I cannot say, at least not without further study. Much of what he has written here is beyond my ability to comprehend. At best guess, I’d venture that after his defeat at Aylesbury, he began working on some way to improve the potency of his magick, in order to counteract my wards of protection or perhaps to create more powerful beasts. And he might have succeeded if we had not apprehended him when we did—this is advanced learning, far
beyond anything that was set down in the original scrolls. After we return to Winchester, I will have more time to study this and perhaps learn what he—”

Wulfric took the parchments from Cuthbert’s hands and tossed them onto the fire. Cuthbert looked on in shock as the flames took hungrily to them, the pages flaring brightly as they were consumed.

“Aethelred is dead,” said Wulfric as he watched the blaze reduce the parchments to a flurry of blackened and glowing embers, to be carried away by the wind. “And the evil he brought forth dies with him.” He turned and walked away, leaving Cuthbert gazing into the fire.

Their work was almost done. The last of Aethelred’s abominations had been butchered and burned, and every inch of Canterbury Cathedral scoured for any that might still remain, lurking in the shadows. Of Aethelred himself, nothing was left but an unrecognizable heap of brittle and charred bone atop a mound of dying embers. All that remained was to see to the fallen, and in that they had been relatively fortunate. Of the seventy-six men who had stormed Canterbury, only five had been killed and another nine wounded.

Wulfric always insisted on seeing to the wounded personally; they were, after all, his responsibility. He had sought each of them out, recruited them, commanded them. Now it was his duty to tend to them.

He had done so already for all but one. He knelt before that one now, a man barely younger than Wulfric himself, who nevertheless seemed to Wulfric little more than a child. They all did; that was the commander’s curse. He knew this man’s face, recognized him as one of the many who had distinguished themselves at Aylesbury, following Wulfric into that hell-borne fray without fear
or hesitation, fighting with courage, never yielding until the battle was won. As Wulfric looked upon the man now, he was ashamed to realize that he did not remember the soldier’s name and was forced to ask.

“Osric,” the man told him, though he was weak and found it difficult to speak. When Wulfric had first approached, Osric had tried to stand so he might salute his commander as befitting a soldier, but his wounded leg would not support him, and so he had to content himself with putting on the most valorous show he could while sitting on his arse, propped up against one of Canterbury’s stone walls.

“You fought bravely today, Osric,” said Wulfric, with a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I am sorry it had to end this way.”

“Not I,” replied Osric, his voice raspy and meek. “I am glad that I got to see it through, to finish the good Lord’s work . . . and to fight one more time by your side.” Osric looked up with swelling pride, which only served to make Wulfric uncomfortable. It always did. This man was dying; he had given up his life for this cause. Yet the praise and the glory was placed on Wulfric, and it felt ill-deserved.

“Is there someone to whom I can convey a message?” Wulfric asked.

Osric shook his head. “Never married. A few women that might be pleased to hear I’m dead, but why give them the satisfaction?” He laughed a little, as did the men assembled around him. Even Wulfric managed a smile.

“I have one request,” said Osric. “Bury me here, at Canterbury. I have no home to speak of. May as well be put to rest where I fell so that I might look down and remember the little good I did here, if nowhere else.”

Wulfric nodded grimly, understanding all too well. He looked again at Osric’s wound. Some kind of damned hog-like thing, already mortally wounded, had lashed out at Osric with a barbed claw as it lay dying, slashing open his left thigh. The wound was
jagged and ugly but not particularly deep. Ordinarily, it would not be considered life threatening, nothing a competent physician could not treat, nothing that could not in time be healed. But this was no ordinary injury, as Wulfric and his men by now knew all too well. A wound inflicted by an abomination would never close, never heal, no matter how skillfully it was treated. Stitches would not take; no dressing could stanch the bleeding. A protracted and painful death was inevitable as blood loss slowly accumulated. It might take hours or days depending on the severity of the wound, but as Wulfric had come to learn, the outcome was always the same. It was no way for a soldier to die.

“Hold him,” he said, and the men standing at Osric’s side took him by the arms. Wulfric drew a dagger from his belt and with one swift and precise strike ended the man’s life, as quickly and humanely as he knew how. He wiped the dagger clean and was about to resheath it when he realized he no longer had need of it. The war was over. Osric was the last poor soul under Wulfric’s command that he would have to dispatch in such a manner. And he had no desire to carry around a souvenir of so grim a task. He tossed the dagger away, into the dirt, and looked to the two men still holding Osric’s body.