Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (5 page)

“Get the door!” I shout. “Get the door!” But it is too late for that. There are a dozen plaguers outside the cart and more stumbling free. A half-dozen of them gather around the oxen and leap like hunting dogs on bears. The Devons roar and buck, then lope forward dragging the cart with them. Plaguers throw their arms around the necks of the beasts and drag along the road, teeth tearing strips of flesh from the panicked oxen.

“The wagon!” James chases the cart down the road and is knocked off his feet by the plagued woman who was bullying Henry’s boy.

I run to his side but I am not fast enough. The woman bites off a strip of James’s scalp. He screams wildly and beats at her as my sword shaves off a quarter of her skull. She looks at me with eyes of angry nothingness and chews, brain and blood glistening above her brows. Locks of James’s hair poke out from her mouth like half eaten spiders. I swing again and this time she falls back and stops chewing. James screams again and again. His hands touch his scalp and when he sees the blood on them his screams grow louder. There is nothing for him now except pain and the slow onset of plague. I drive my sword through his throat and pray that Saint Giles gives him peace.

A pilgrim stumbles away from me and collapses onto the road. “He . . . he killed James!
He killed James
!
The knight killed Father James
!”

“I had to!” I shout, but my voice is drowned out by other pilgrims taking up the call.

“The knight killed James!”

“I had no choice, you stupid bastards,” I shout. “He was going to plague or bleed to death.”

But I cannot press my argument because a wave of plaguers lumber toward us. Most of the pilgrims scream and run northward. An old woman trips and splashes heavily upon the road. She raises a hand toward me as a bald plaguer with thick black brows takes hold of her hair. I leap forward and Saint Giles sends him home. I have no time to help the woman to her feet. Three more plaguers reach me. Their teeth clack against my armor. Their hands pull at my helm.

Tristan’s sword flashes at my side. He has his own plaguer problems. One of the guards lies a few feet away, his mail coat pulled up, his hand twitching as the afflicted tear at his stomach.

A fat man with a leather apron throws his arms around my head. His face is gray and spotted with red boils. The man’s blood-stained mouth grows larger and larger until the jaws latch on either side of my visor. Teeth grate against metal as he gnaws. Another plaguer gets beneath my shield and takes hold of my arm. I feel pressure against the mail at my wrist and gasp. Elizabeth dies if this creature gets its teeth under my gauntlet.

I drop my sword and roar. Draw my dagger and drive it up through the fat man’s chin, into his skull. The jaws stop sawing at my helm. I stab at the plaguer holding my arm as the fat man’s body crashes to the ground in a trembling mound of flesh and boils. Two of the afflicted shove at my waist and crack their teeth against my cuisses. I kick one of them—a woman in a long grey dress—and she falls backward onto the road, sending up a spray of brown water. I drive my dagger into the shining, night-river eye of the other—a man with curly blond hair. He convulses and falls twitching to the mud.

A plaguer crawls on hands and knees toward Tristan and he kicks it in the mouth. A half-dozen others kneel in a circle around a pilgrim’s body and feed. The remaining guard screams and buries his poleaxe into the side of a plagued man’s head. But two other plaguers drag him down. Tristan and I leap at the same time. I grab a wiry man’s worn boot and pull him back away from the guard. The plaguer hisses and lashes at me with his hand. I step on his back and use both hands to drive the sword into his cheek as he cranes his neck to face me. The blade splits his cheek with a crack and pins him to the muddy road. His hand claws at the sword, so I step on his neck, pull the sword free, and let Saint Giles taste his brain.

Tristan is on one knee by the soldier, his sword tip in the mud.

“He hurt?” I ask.

Tristan’s helm pivots to face me and I can see one of his eyes behind the visor. There is a grim assessment in that eye. He shakes his head softly.

The guard pushes himself to a sitting position and stares at his hand. Blood seeps down from beneath his gauntlet. I think about the plaguer biting at my mail and glance at my wrist to make sure there is no blood on me.

“No,” the guard whispers. “No, no.” His voice is so low that I can only just about hear the words. He throws off the gauntlet and stares at the torn flesh on his wrist. “Oh, Mother Mary, no.” He turns to me, his eyes wide under the rim of the nasal helm. His hands clutch at my tabard. “I don’t want to die. Oh, Christ above, I don’t want to die.”

“I’m sorry.” My words hardly rise above a whisper. “I am so terribly sorry.”

His breathing is ragged and fast. “I don’t want to die.” He looks toward the circle of plaguers tearing the pilgrim apart, a few paces away. The rain washes the dead man’s blood from their hands as they feed. “I don’t want to die.”

 I put one hand behind his neck and touch his helmet with mine. “You will go to the Lord. You will have peace and eternal reward for your deeds today.”

 His head jerks away from mine. “A cure!” he paws at my tunic again. “You said there was a cure! You said there was a cure! I can be healed. Yes?”

Three cures, nothing more. So precious little
.

I touch my breastplate and feel Elizabeth’s ampoule poke my chest. Tristan catches my eye and shakes his head. We only have the two left, and the second belongs to Morgan.

“Please, do you have it?” the guard asks. “Do you have the cure?”

My soul withers and rises to my throat as I shake my head. “We have none to give you.”

“I have a horse.” The guard’s head shakes with desperation, his hands tighten around my tabard. “I can go. I can get the cure. Where . . . where can I find it?
Where
?”

I close my eyes. “Syria, perhaps. Nowhere near, my friend. Nowhere near.”

My words murder the hope that lies in the man’s eyes. He throws off his helmet and weeps, hands over his face. “Make it swift,” he sobs. “Please, make it swift.”

I draw my dagger. The rain makes swirling patterns of the plaguer blood on the blade.

We hold life in our hands, but give death, instead
.

“Make it swift,” he says again.

I drive the blade into his throat and cradle his head as he sputters and chokes. The guard looks into my eyes and clutches my arm. Blood washes from his mouth and over his lip.

And with each death, the world loses a little more humanity
.

His hand falls limply onto my breastplate, making the wet metal squeak, but his eyes do not close. His dead gaze pierces me and I wonder if he knows about the ampoule hanging from my neck already. If God has whispered it to him yet.

. . .a terrible weight for the soul to bear
.

I lower my head and listen to the rain beating on my helm.

But there is no time to mourn the man. Tristan jumps to his feet and stares northward.

“Riders,” he says.

I look backward. Four mounted knights are stopped on the road, less than a quarter mile to the north. One of them speaks to a fleeing pilgrim who points in our direction.

I stare upward toward the Heavens. “Satan’s beard. Sir Gerald’s men.”

“Tell me that story again, Edward,” Tristan says. “You had a cannon pointed at Gerald, a flame inches from the touch hole. What did you do again? I always forget the next part.”

Chapter 6

On our journey south I have tried to avoid roads whenever possible, but the rain has made marshes of the countryside. We have no choice but to seek a dry path. Sir Gerald is aware of my ultimate goal, so he knows where to search for me. He will follow me all the way to St. Edmund’s Bury. I am certain that he would have entered the monastery there already and killed Elizabeth, if not for the sea of plaguers circling the abbey walls. She is an angel, and the Lord protects his angels. There is no army in England mightier than the one God has stationed around my Elizabeth.

 But that army is in St. Edmund’s Bury and we are here. And Gerald’s men are on their way.

I glance to the south. The horses that belonged to the guards mill on the grass a few hundred paces away. I pick up the dead man’s discarded helm, then slip the mail coif off his head and unfasten the black traveling cloak. Tristan watches me, then nods and finds the other dead guard. He kills two plaguers to get to the man’s helmet, coif and cloak, and we run for the horses.

A mass of plaguers feed on the two oxen. One of the animals is still alive. It lies on its side mewing softly, its eyes rolling. I kick a plaguer from its back then slit the ox’s throat. The afflicted shriek and bathe themselves in the gush of blood. They drink as if from a fountain of wine.

A plagued man with broken spear lodged in his shoulder reaches for me and I finish the work that the spearman began. The man falls backward, his throat shredded by my blade.

The splatter of hooves on mud grows louder as the knights gallop toward us. Tristan and I approach the horses belonging to the mercenaries. The long-legged geldings back away from us as we approach. I yank the reins of the nearest one and pull myself into the saddle, hang the dead guard’s helmet from a metal hook in the leather. Tristan leaps onto the other horse and we wheel the animals south before driving our spurs into their flanks.

And they run.

Two of the knights stop at the wagon, but the other two give chase. Tristan motions to me and slows, then turns to face our pursuers.

“We don’t have time for a fight,” I shout. “And the cannons won’t fire in the rain.”

He unslings the crossbow from his back.

“The string is wet, Tristan!”

“I wrapped the bow in one of Elizabeth’s scarves,” he replies.

My heart aches at the sound of her name. His Elizabeth, not mine.

He must have kept the bowstring cocked since our forest run, for he slips a bolt into the groove, raises the weapon to his shoulder, and sights one of the approaching knights. When they are within two hundred paces he fires. The bolt wavers in the air and falls miserably short.

“Your damned bowstring is wet, Tristan!” I slap the reins, kick back my heels and my gelding races southward. Tristan follows.

“Silk,” he shouts, “is not a proper barrier to water!”

I do not answer him. The knights are too close behind us now to speak. I hunch low in the saddle and snap the reins again. My horse thunders along the Roman road, sending up daggers of mud behind and gouts of white breath ahead. Tristan rides behind and to my right, slapping his horse’s flank.

The knights slow their horses after a mile or so and turn back toward the wagon, but Tristan and I do not stop. We run the horses for another mile, then slow to a trot. My gelding tosses its head and blows but I will not allow it rest yet.

Tristan twists in his saddle to look back. “They just gave up.”

“They don’t want to pull too far from their friends. They must have been the vanguard of Gerald’s force.” I thank Saint Giles and the Virgin Mary. If they are the vanguard, then Gerald is behind us. I had feared that he would ride south quickly and beat us to St. Edmund’s Bury. But I do not think he has. Sir Gerald is behind us, and now nothing stands between me and my angel.

Nothing but a thousand bloody plaguers around the walls of the abbey. I wonder if God might call off his army long enough for me to get through.

 “Edward?”

I follow Tristan’s gaze southward. Something moves on the southern road. I take my horse onto the wet grass and give it the rest it has earned.

“Can you make it out?” I ask. Tristan’s eyes have always been better than mine.

“Looks like a cart,” he says. “A small one.”

“Is there a bloody fair somewhere?” I ask. “This road holds a damned nuisance of carts.” I watch the cart for a time. It is small, so there cannot be many men on it. No riders seem to accompany it. I do not imagine it will pose a threat to us, but I am too close to Elizabeth to take any risks. “We’re going to canter past. Do not slow down, do not stop. Just ride past quickly. And when we are past, break into a gallop and get away from them as quickly as possible. Understood?”

“And when they see two armed men bearing down on them, what do you suppose they will do, Edward?”

“They will do nothing,” I reply. “Keep your hands on the reins and stay in a swift canter. We may scare them, but they won’t risk a fight if we don’t bring one to them.”

It is a pitiable world we live in now, one in which we must fear the men of reason more than the mindless masses. Perhaps it has always been so.

I take off my helm and bevor and don the mail coif I took from the dead guard. It fits snugly but wool trim along the edges keeps the links from scraping my chin. I tug the nasal helm onto my head and tighten the strap until I can shake my head without the cap rocking. The thick traveling cloak is heavy with rain, but I tie it across my shoulders anyway.

I took the guard’s helmet and cloak in case Sir Gerald was waiting for us to the south, but the disguise will be useful here, too. Tristan dons the other guard’s cloak, helm and coif and we look at each other. If Gerald questions the men in the cart, they will say they saw two garrison guards riding past, not knights. Gerald may suspect it was us, but there will be uncertainty. And Elizabeth’s life may well depend on uncertainty.