Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (38 page)

Frederico touches his face, looks at his fingers. I nod.

“Flee!” I point into the plaguers. “Flee for your lives!”

Frederico looks back at his men and shouts to them in Italian. Two of them finish loading, fire a volley toward the gate, and fall back to Frederico. I dredge their names from my memory. Domenico and Ermolao. One devout, the other slow-witted.

I smear their faces with the ointment. There is not much left of the paste.

Frederico shouts at his men in Italian, pointing past Morgan toward the plaguers.

Ermolao shakes his head. Domenico crosses himself. The Genoese are a disciplined lot, but I do not think there is a soldier on this earth who will run into a crowd of plaguers without hesitating.

Frederico shouts again and lunges at the plaguers. They hiss and thrash, backing away from him. “
Ora, andare
!”

The two men exchange glances, then walk gingerly forward. Frederico and I exchange glances, too, and shove the men into the crowd. Ermalao shrieks, but the plaguers leap back from him. The two Italians push their way through the crowd as the next two crossbowmen fall back to Frederico. Tarviccio’s face shines with sweat and he grimaces, but I do not think the arrow in his shoulder will kill him. Joseph, the marksman, is at his side. I apply the paste to both of them and we shove them into the horde. I pray I am not sending them to their deaths.

Sparks light the tunnel for an instant as an arrow strikes the wall beside me. The tunnel curves here and the archers have trouble finding a clear shot.

“What are they doing?” Gerald shouts. “What is happening in there?
Where are they going
?” His voice cracks with fury.

Magnus stumbles back to us, the massive siege crossbow hanging from his shoulder. An arrow juts from one side of his chest, another from his thigh, but he drags a crossbowman through the waterlogged tunnel. I smear ointment on his thick, bare arms. The man he drags is Riggio, drinker and jokester. I do not think Riggio finds anything funny about the arrow in his flank. I scrape the last of the ointment from the sides of the jar and rub the paste onto Riggio’s face. Frederico makes the plaguers recoil again, demonstrating the old magic, and speaks in Italian. Magnus kisses a cross dangling from his neck and drags his friend into the plaguer horde.

Morgan glances back at me and I nod. He tucks the cannon to his chest and drives into the throng, after Magnus.

I drop the empty jar and look back toward the gate. An arrow strikes the wall and shatters, sending fragments of wood clattering against my helm.

Three archers at the gate draw back their cords. I have no time to unsling my shield. Frederico and I dive to the floor. I try to flatten myself as much as I can. The water gushes through my visor and washes, cold, upon my face.

I rise a moment later, when I am sure the archers have fired, and scrabble toward the plaguers. Frederico does the same. Something thuds against the shield on my back. Another bloody arrow. I am glad I did not have time to unsling my shield.

We dive into the mass of plaguers. They are Heaven’s soldiers, and they will protect us, for we are the champions of the dead. They are God’s armor, and they will shield us from Gerald’s arrows.

I shove my way deeper into the afflicted. A man wearing a hood tugs at my helmet.

“Let go!” I shout.

A woman with one long, dangling earring grabs my breastplate at the armhole and yanks.

“Leave me be!”

Teeth scrape against my helm.

I raise my vambraces toward them. “Fear the old magic!”

A gangly woman breaks teeth on my mail skirt. A bald man snaps at my bare hand and I pull it away at the last instant.

I look at my arms. There is no trace of ointment on them, only beaded water.

Frederico screams.

God’s armor is eating us.

EPISODE 8

Chapter 46

I tear myself from the grasping plaguers, spin, and fall onto my hands and knees. My palms slide against the sludge of mud and rotting bodies covering the tunnel floor. The afflicted crush against me. Legs and hands and gnashing teeth. I crawl past them, drag myself through a river of death, rip myself free of their clutching hands. Teeth click against the steel of my armor. Bodies fall onto me and slide off the shield on my back.

A plaguer grabs my foot. I kick with my other leg, lashing with the iron spur, and feel flesh yield beneath it. The plaguer howls and releases me. I pull myself forward.

Where is it
?

“There!” Gerald shouts. “There he is! Shoot him! Put a shaft in his skull!”

Where is it
!

The lantern still hangs from the flint stub, and a patch of pink shines on the wall. Brighter than any stone. I lunge for it. A plaguer grabs my great helm, pulls me back. I slam my elbow into his chin and he lets go. More hands pull at me as I stretch forward. More teeth searching for weaknesses in my armor. My fingers touch the wall, scrape the glob of paste from the stones. I reach back with the ointment and the plaguers pull away from me, then fall forward as the rear ranks shove them. I smear the paste onto the bridge of my helm.

Frederico howls and tears free from the crowd. He falls, with a splash, at my side. Points to his face, where I had smeared the ointment. “
Questa merda non funziona
!”

An arrow drives into a rotting body a foot from my face and an archer outside shouts that there is not enough light to see us.

“Just keep firing!” Gerald shouts behind us. “Don’t stop!”

“How did you not get bitten?” I say, rubbing my fingers over Frederico’s face again, dabbing the last remnants of the old magic onto his skin. He squints at me and I wave him off. “It doesn’t matter.”

An arrow slashes into a plagued woman. She screams, the horrible plaguer scream, and tries to back away from us, but she cannot push past the plaguers behind her. Another arrow plunges into her stomach. And then another strikes my shield.

“Edward!” Tristan shouts from somewhere beyond the plaguers. “Edward, we can’t see!”

I whirl around in the water and an arrow thumps into the shield on my back. I groan and grab the lantern from the wall, crawl forward. An arrow splashes into the water beside me. Another glances off my helm. I stumble to my feet and push forward, feeling God’s armor part and nestle around me.

“Where are they going?” Gerald shouts. “They’re killing themselves! Are they mad?”

The plaguers nearest to me back away, hissing. Other plaguers shove past them, then they, too, hiss and back away. They are like eddying waters, roiling about me in impotent rage. Frederico lumbers behind me. We thrust our way through the afflicted, squeezing past endless rows of bodies, nestled so tightly against the plaguers that I can smell their foul breath. They howl and flinch from me when the heated metal of the lantern touches them.

The tunnel opens wider after a dozen paces. Tristan, Morgan and the crossbowmen are huddled at the center of a small chamber. Their eyes are wide, their hands clutching weapons tightly. Tristan lets out a deep sigh, nods to me. He glances at the back wall, now illuminated by the lantern. “There!” he cries. “There’s the ladder.”

I stride toward the steel rungs but Tristan beats me to them. “You can go last this time,” he says.

“You have nothing to worry about,” I reply. “The plaguers won’t climb after us this time.”

“I’m always last,” he says, clambering up the ladder. “And there are always plaguers climbing behind, reaching for me. Not this time, Edward. Not this time.”

He reaches the trap door, shoves at it tentatively and it yields, rising a few inches. He glances down at me, then shoves the trapdoor firmly. It opens.

A multitude of plaguer faces look down and hiss, their arms grasping at Tristan’s helmet.

“God hates me!” he cries, lashing out at the plaguer arms with one hand. “How are there plaguers in the monastery?”

I barely hear his words.

The trap door was unlocked.

Gerald entered the monastery.

Tristan throws his helmet off and pulls the plaguers down one by one, yanking on their arms until they plummet to the chamber floor. He screams in terror the entire time.

I wince each time one of the afflicted strikes the mud, but there is no other way. Most of the plaguers rise from the mud and recoil from the ointment on our armor. The ones that cannot stand writhe and pull themselves along he mud, away from us.

“Hurry, Tristan!” I clench and unclench my fists the entire time. When the last of the plaguers is down, scramble up the ladder, my boots clanging dully off the iron rungs.

Tristan climbs into the prior’s chamber ahead of me. I hand him the lantern and climb the last steps into the monastery.

“Wait for the others!” I cross to the door and yank it open.

The moonlight cascades upon St. Edmund’s Abbey; a central church, taller than most cathedrals I have seen; a prior’s palace as opulent as any duke’s; breweries, gilded chapels, a refectory, stables, kitchens. It is a glittering city within a town. But it is not the fine architecture that draws my attention tonight. It is not the statues of saints and bishops, or the studded minarets rising into the night sky that make me stare. It is the half-dozen lurching shapes in the churchyard.

“How did they get in?” Tristan stands behind me and looks over my shoulder.

I do not respond. The trap door was open. Gerald got inside.

My heart hammers against my ribs, a condemned prisoner rattling the gates of his cell.

The trap door was open.

I run across the churchyard, ignoring the shouts behind me, around to the entrance of the great abbey church, where I left my Elizabeth. I dart through an archway, and throw open the mighty doors, remembering the horror that awaited me inside the first time I arrived.

It is too dark to see the chantry, where I left my Elizabeth. A few candelabra are still lit, their candles guttering, but most of the light in the cathedral has been extinguished. I race down the broad aisle, my footsteps echoing to the ribbed ceiling far, far above. The shrine of Saint Edmund sits behind a screen, upon on a raised dais and behind the high altar. I take no heed of the gilded screen, nor the box of marble and gold that lies beyond it. Because a shape writhes upon a feather mattress, in front of the high altar.

My shape.

My angel.

My Elizabeth.

My Elizabeth is here.

I imagine the sound of choirs in this church.

My Elizabeth is here.

I throw off my helm, let it clang upon the flagstones and echo to the heavens. Someone has draped a sheet over my wife. She thrashes against it, makes muffled grunts and moans.

I kneel beside her, draw the cure from around my neck and stare at the ceramic ampoule. Dear God.

How I have dreamed of this moment.

How I have dreaded this moment.

I cannot think overly much about what has to be done. I must give her the cure without a thought to the consequences, or I may never find the courage to do it.

I take hold of the sheet, draw a deep breath, and pull the fabric away.

I stare down at my angel.

A twitchy man with bushy eyebrows stares back.

Chapter 47

“Brother Philip?” I roar. “What the devil are you doing here?”

The monk grunts and jerks his head back and forth. I draw my knife and cut the gag from his mouth.

“They took all the chickens!” he shouts. “Every last one of them!”

I slap him.

I should not hit a man of God, but the fury is upon me.

“Where is she?” I bellow. “
Where is she
?”

Brother Philip’s face is a deep, mottled red where I slapped him. He arches his twitching eyebrows almost to his hairline. “Wh . . . where . . . is who?”

I pound my gauntleted fist against the floor. The crack of metal on granite resounds across the chantry. “
Where is my wife
!”

My words echo back to me.

. . . my wife
!

Brother Philip licks at his lips. “She’s . . . she’s safe. She’s here in . . . the monastery. She’s safe.”