Knights of the Blood (28 page)

The hollow rumble of the falling portcullis gave just enough warning for Kluge to react. Though hampered by the girl hanging onto his leg, he used his newly recovered strength to launch a powerful leap that barely threw him clear. He was still in midair when the falling portcullis crashed to the ground, its sharpened spikes spearing the body of the girl in the fishnet stockings and pinning her to the earth like an insect mounted on a specimen card. The hands gripping Kluge’s boot relaxed, and with a jerk he was free of the mangled vampire. His wounds now nearly healed, he sprinted for the safety of the dark woods.

Baumann had remained motionless against the tree trunk since Kluge led the raiding party into the castle. Taking short, shallow breaths, he had watched undetected as the three men—at—arms moved to the edge of the woods not fifteen feet from where he stood. They were standing there now.

From the sounds drifting over from the castle, it was obvious that things weren’t going as planned. The shooting had been too concentrated, too intense, to have been effective against the armored knights. Baumann’s own experiences of half a century ago told him that.

There was movement near the gate. Baumann strained his one good eye to make out what was happening, but couldn’t quite see who or what was coming out of the castle. The portcullis dropped, and then a black—caped figure broke into the moonlight and ran towards the woods. At once Baumann recognized his commanding officer. Kluge was limping, retreating toward the safety of the forest.

The men—at—arms had seen the figure leave the castle, too, and the tallest of the three had unslung his bow and was nocking an arrow to the string when Baumann, gliding up from behind, rammed his bayonet up under the archer’s chin and drove it into his brain.

Turning, he drew his sword, smashing the pommel into the forehead of the man on his right and then spinning around to slash his blade deep into the shoulder of the other man before his sword was halfway out of its scabbard. The man on the ground tried to get up, but Baumann stepped astride him and used both hands to drive his sword down hard through his opponent’s chest. Standing on the dead man, he grunted as he pulled his sword out of the corpse, and turned to finish the man with the wounded shoulder.

He was gone. Baumann cast a quick glance around and, satisfied that the wounded man had made a run for it and was not preparing to attack again, turned and headed out across the field to help Kluge. All gunfire had ceased by now, and even the clash of arms no longer resounded from within the castle walls. It was time to make good their escape.

. An hour later, Kluge and Baumann emerged from the woods not far from the vans and headed unhurriedly toward Drummond’s parked Mercedes. Kluge was unbuttoning his tunic as he walked, and when he reached the back of the car, he pulled out the keys and unlocked the trunk. Shedding his tunic, he tossed it into Father Freise’s nearly empty suitcase and gestured for Baumann to do the same.

Then, while Baumann manhandled Magda Krebs’ rnotorcycle into the larger of the two vans, Kluge climbed into the back of the lead van and opened one of the lockers to remove a small bag containing a change of clothes. Pulling off his breeches and boots in the cramped confines of the van, he changed, then went back out and placed the rest of his uniform in Father Freise’s suitcase. In a few minutes Baumann returned, also changed to other clothes, and placed his own breeches and boots in the suitcase, which he then took back to the van with the motorcycle.

Climbing behind the wheel of the lead van, Kluge revved the engine a few times, put the car in gear, and after signaling Baumann to follow, made a U—turn, heading back toward Germany. Under the full moon, Drummond’s white Mercedes—Benz parked in the shadow of the dark forest took on a lonely, ghostlike appearance as the glowing red taillights of the vans receded into the shadows of darkness.

* * *

Later that night, Father Freise and de Beq moved together through the great hall, where de Beq’s wounded had been brought and laid out on the floor. Nearly all of the men had suffered cuts of varying degrees of seriousness, and some had taken appalling wounds. A few, like William of Etton, had been shot, some repeatedly. As the less seriously injured moved among their comrades to treat them, Father Freise was amazed at how stoically the men endured their wounds, with only the most grievously injured making any sound.

With de Beq he moved among the wounded men, offering what consolation he could to those who seemed the most helpless. He knelt with de Beq next to one of the men—at—arms who had a bloodsoaked bandage wrapped over the empty sockets of his eyes. In obvious pain, the man grabbed de Beq’s arm and said something to him in Norman—French. De Beq, unable to speak for a moment, merely nodded. The blind man repeated what he’d said, and de Beq emotionally replied,
“Oui, mon confrere.”

“What does he want?” Father Freise asked.

“The misericord,” de Beq said flatly.

“I don’t understand.”

“He wants the
coup de grace.
He wants me to kill him, and share his blood with the other less seriously wounded.” De Beq’s voice was drained of all emotion.

“But his wounds—he’ll recover ... “

“As a blind man,” de Beq interrupted Father Freise. “He would rather be dead.”

De Beq called out, and one of the knights brought over a large pewter tankard. Helping the blinded man into a sitting position, de Beq took his knife and, before Freise could do or say anything to stop it, drew the blade swiftly across the man’s wrist. Blood welled up strongly, and de Beq quickly caught it in the tankard. As the vessel filled, it was replaced by another, and then another, as the blind man slowly faded into death.

Father Freise, for his part, could only kneel by the dying warrior and, in Latin, offer him the Last Rites of the Church, which the man gratefully accepted. Toward the end, de Beq brought the cross hilt of his sword to the dying man’s lips, remembering another man and another gentle death in a far away desert oasis where it all had begun. The man—at—arms relaxed into de Beq’s arms then, with a last strained breath whispering, “Gramercy,” before he finally died.

And de Beq, bowing his head over his departed brother, whispered the words he had spoken that other time, and many times, in the more than seven hundred years of his long life.

“Not to us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thee be the Glory ... .”

He spoke them in Latin, but Freise understood and crossed himself as he whispered, “Amen.”

Gently laying his companion down, de Beq took one of the tankards and moved with it to the side of one of the knights who had been shot in the thigh by one of the punkers. Placing it to the knight’s lips, de Beq held the cup while the wounded man drank deeply of its crimson draught, softly murmuring,
“Ceci, c’est le cadeau de notre confrère. “

The knight lay back with a sigh, closing his eyes. As Freise watched, within mere seconds, the ugly black hole began to pucker around the edges and slowly seal itself closed, the skin glowing an angry red where, but minutes before, had been an open wound. Friese was astonished.

“How–how can this be?” he stammered.

“I don’t know,” de Beq replied. “It is one of God’s mysteries–part of His punishment of us, for having profaned the sacraments and having defiled the Lord’s cup.”

“But, how can you say you are punished by the Lord,” Father Freise asked, “when He heals you in this way, and grants you the age of Methuselah?”

“Because we can only survive by drinking the blood of beasts–or of men, which we
will
not do, save when the gift is freely offered, and no other help will avail,” said de Beq. “And we are punished because we are cut off from men and cannot do God’s intended work, staying as we must, here in our castle.”

De Beq and Father Freise moved on to another wounded man, suffering from a stab wound to the lung. The man’s own blood frothed at his lips, but after de Beq had given him to drink, again speaking of the gift of their
confrère,
Freise noticed that at once the labored breathing grew easier, and a touch of color returned to the man’s cheeks. Within a minute or two, the man slipped into healing sleep.

“But you
must
leave this place,” Friese argued, as they moved on to another wounded man. “You have to help us track down the man who attacked the castle tonight.”

“Why?” asked de Beg. “I doubt he’ll be back soon. “

It amazed Father Freise that the kind of mind that could conceive of a Gothic cathedral could at once be so naive.

“Because he is
evil,
what he
represents
is evil, and he must be
stopped.”
Freise stood up. “You are a knight, de Beq, sworn to protect the Church and those who are weak, and yet you would fail to fight this evil. It is beyond comprehension.”

De Beq said nothing, but followed Father Freise over to the corner of the room where Drummond lay propped up against the wall, dried blood matted to his face and shirt and a bloody bandage wound around his head.

“How’m I doing, Frank?” Drummond asked, his thick tongue slurring his speech.

“Well, to be honest, you could be better.” Freise bent down and looked into Drummond’s eyes, comparing the size of the pupils and relieved that both of them reacted equally. “You’ve got a nasty cut along the side of your head, but I don’t think you’ve got a concussion.”

Drummond closed his eyes, sighing deeply. “That’s good. Did we get ‘em, Frank? All of ‘em?’?

“ ‘Fraid not. Kluge got away, and I’m not sure if there were more where he came from.” Freise checked Drummond’s bandage, and decided that a change could wait until daylight, when he could see. “We did get some prisoners, though. Maybe one of them will talk.”

“Just make sure you read ‘em their rights first.” Drummond tried to laugh, but the pain made it come out more like a moan. “Jesus, I feel like shit. How long was I out?”

“About an hour and a half, I’d guess,” Freise replied.

“An hour and a half? Then we’ve gotta get after them!” Drummond tried to get to his feet, but the pain made him black out.

Freise eased Drummond down flat on the floor, rearranging the rolled—up cloak that was supposed to be cushioning his head, then turned to de Beq, who had watched and listened in silence.

“You’ll need an interpreter with the prisoners,” he said. “Where are they?”

Outside, five badly. wounded punkers were propped up against the wall of the great hall, hands tied behind their backs, guarded by two men with crossbows. Over by the gates, three of Kluge’s SS men were crouching on their knees, their elbows tied behind their backs and their hands tied together in front of them–all except for one knight, whose stump of a right arm prevented tying his remaining hand to anything other than his belt.

De Beq and the priest walked over to the punkers.

“You can speak their language?” de Beq asked.

“I speak German, if that’s what you mean,” Freise replied.

“Ask these peasants where the Nazi is.” De Beq looked at Freise. “Tell them that if they cooperate, they will die quickly. Otherwise I will tie them all together and set fire to them.”

Freise’s face went ashen. “I can’t tell them that ... . “

“Why not?” de Beq asked. “It is all perfectly true.“

Freise turned slowly to the punkers and began to translate de Beq’s ultimatum.

“Fuck you,” one of them said, spitting at Freise.

Without changing expression, de Beq stepped over to the boy who had spit on Freise and grabbed a handful of the punker’s stringy hair, at the same time whipping out his dagger and placing its tip against the punk’s Adam’s apple. Even as the teenager’s eyes were widening in disbelief, and Freise gasped, de Beq’s hand rammed the dagger through the punk’s throat and held him pinned to the wall behind him.

The heels of the Doc Martins drummed up and down as the punker writhed and gurgled in the agony of death for nearly a minute–to the horrified dismay of his fellow prisoners. When he was still at last, de Beq released the filthy, matted hair and pulled his dagger out of the teenager’s throat, letting the body slump forward. Walking across the courtyard then, he stopped in front of the SS men who had been made prisoners.

“Father Freise,” he called over his shoulder, “I need you over here.”

Freise walked over to where the three men knelt, belligerently glaring up at their captor. They had been stripped of their helmets and cloaks, and the sight of their SS uniforms gave Freise a brief flashback to the war and a scene in an SS triage camp.

“Tell these three the same thing you told them,” de Beq said, gesturing toward the punkers with his thumb.

Without inflection, Freise relayed de Beq’s earlier ultimatum to the three men in black, who stared back at him in stony silence. He was about to turn back to de Beq, when one of them spoke.

“Tell him we are knights,” the man said in German, “and we demand to be treated as such.”

“And tell him,” said the one with one hand, “that he dishonors himself by asking us to betray our master.”

“Yes,” added the first knight, “tell him that we welcome death as much as we loathe dishonor.”

De Beq smiled slightly when Freise turned back to him after speaking with the SS men.

“So, did they tell you where their leader is?” de Beq asked.

“No,” said Freise. “They wanted me to tell you that they are knights and demand to be treated as such.”

The color drained out of de Beq’s face. “Are you sure that’s what they said?”

“Yes,” said Father Freise. “That, and that you dishonor yourself by asking them to betray their master.”

De Beq’s jaw tightened behind his beard. “The first one,” he said quietly. “He spoke twice. What else did he say?”

Father Freise tried to avoid de Beq’s steely gaze, but couldn’t. Finally, after an anguished silence, he answered.

“He said that they welcomed death as much as they loathed dishonor.” Freise felt like a judge passing sentence of death.

De Beq let out a long breath.

“Then in that case, holy Father, tell them they shall die–like knights.”