Tales of the Old World Read online

  Leofric looked back at the repulsive corpse and said, “Impossible. The body has rotted from within.”

  “I swear to you, Leofric, that this is exactly how this… thing was put here. Look at his arms, he was a worshipper of the Dark Gods.”

  Leofric was loath to look again at the horrendous sight, but bent once again to the body. His eyes roamed the purulent, flabby arms, at last seeing what Carlomax was referring to. All along the length of the man’s arms were a regular series of blisters, each formed in a triangular pattern of three adjoining circles. Each cluster was arranged in the same pattern.

  “I have seen this before,” said Leofric.

  “You have? Where?”

  “I fought alongside the king at the great battle against the northern tribes at the foot of the Ulricsberg. I saw this symbol painted on the banners and carved into the flesh of the warriors who worshipped the Dark God of pestilence and decay.”

  Carlomax made the sign the protective horns as Leofric saw that many of the open wounds on the man’s body had more than a hint of mouth to them, some even having twisted vestigial teeth and gums protruding from the grey meat of the body.

  “The man was an altered,” said Carlomax. “He deserved to die.”

  Leofric nodded. The mutating power of Chaos had warped the dead man’s flesh into this morbidly repulsive form for some unguessable purpose and the horror of it sickened him.

  The power of Chaos was a foulness that infected the minds of the weak with promises of easy power and immortality, but it inevitably led to corruption and death, though such a fate never seemed to deter others from believing they could master it.

  “I’ve seen enough,” he said, turning and marching up the stairs. He needed to be out of that foetid darkness and away from the disgusting vision of the mutated corpse. He emerged into the sunlight, taking a deep breath of fresh air and feeling his head clear almost instantly as he moved away from the building.

  “You see now why this happened?” asked Carlomax, following Leofric back into the daylight above.

  Leofric nodded, but said, “It won’t make any difference though.”

  Carlomax shook his head. “It has to. When people see what happened here and why, justice will prevail.”

  “Justice?”

  “Yes, justice,” snapped Carlomax. “That is the code of the Herrimaults, to uphold justice where the law has failed and to reject the dark gods and to fight against them at all times.”

  “The Herrimaults truly have a code of honour?”

  “We do,” said Carlomax defiantly.

  “Tell me of it,” said Leofric.

  As the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky, Leofric sat on the edge of the palisade wall looking out over the surrounding lands, his thoughts confused and uncertain. When he had first heard of Derrevin Libre, he had been horrified at the upsetting of the natural order of things and branded the Herrimaults as little better than brigands, but the day spent with Carlomax had disabused him of that notion.

  The man’s brother had been hung for smiling at a noble’s daughter and his mother crippled by a beating for weeping at the execution. Small wonder he had turned to the life of an outlaw.

  Carlomax had told him how he had later abducted the noble’s daughter, intending to rape and torture her, but had found that he had not the stomach for such vileness, and had released her unharmed.

  How much of that story was true, he didn’t know for sure, but Carlomax had an integrity to him that Leofric had quickly recognised and despite his initial misgivings, he found he believed the man. The code of the Herrimaults had impressed him, its tenets not unfamiliar to a knight such as he; to protect the innocent, to uphold justice, to be true to your fellows and to fight the powers of Chaos wherever they are found.

  Following such a code, Carlomax might himself have been a knight were it not for his low birth. And from what Leofric had seen around Derrevin Libre, he couldn’t argue that Carlomax had created a functioning society for its people that was superior to the lot of the majority of Bretonnian peasants.

  The night’s darkness was absolute and Leofric knew that come the morning he and Havelock would ride to the city of Aquitaine itself to warn the duke of the threat gathering in the north of his lands.

  Filled with such gloomy thoughts, Leofric did not hear Havelock approach, his squire appearing absurdly cheerful, though he was not surprised. To another peasant, Derrevin Libre must seem like paradise and Leofric found that he could not find it in himself to disagree.

  “You should get some sleep, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow and you still haven’t got your strength back yet… my lord,” said Havelock and Leofric couldn’t help but notice the tiniest hesitation before he had added “my lord”.

  “I know,” said Leofric.

  Havelock nodded, suddenly awkward and Leofric said, “Do you want to stay here, Havelock? In the village, I mean?”

  His squire frowned and shook his head. “No, my lord. Why would I want to do such a thing?”

  Leofric was surprised and said, “I thought you admired the Herrimaults?”

  “I do, my lord,” agreed Havelock. “But I swore an oath to you and I plan on honouring that. It’s nice here, don’t get me wrong, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But it won’t last,” whispered Havelock sadly. “You know it and I know it. When the local lords finally get over whatever feuds are keeping them busy, they’ll come in force and burn this place to the ground. Can’t have the peasants believing that there might be other ways of life than the one they’re born to, eh? Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Leofric shook his head. “No, you’re not wrong. I just wish the notions that underpin the knightly code and the Herrimaults’ code could be put into practice beyond the conduct of a single knight or outlaw.”

  “Well, it’s a noble dream, my lord, but we live in the real world, don’t we?”

  Leofric said, “That we do, Havelock, that we do. Here, help me up.”

  Havelock pulled Leofric to his feet, the pair of them freezing as a chorus of wolf howls echoed through the darkness.

  Leofric’s gaze was drawn to the edge of the forest as he heard new sounds beyond that of the howling wolves, the tramp of feet and the crack of snapping branches as armed warriors marched through the trees.

  “Oh no…” whispered Leofric as he saw scores of armoured skeletons emerge from the treeline, packs of snapping wolves at their heels.

  Standing in the centre of the battle line, dimly illuminated by the flickering glow of the torches set on the palisade walls of Derrevin Libre, was the gold and silver armoured champion of the dead and the hooded necromancer. The champion rode the monstrous carcass of the blackest horse, its eyes afire with the flames of the damned.

  “Run, Havelock!” shouted Leofric. “Get Carlomax! Tell him to get every man who can hold a sword to the walls. We’re under attack!”

  Within moments, a hundred men were at the wall, some armed with longbows, but most with peasant weapons: axes, spears and scythes.

  The army of undead had not moved since Leofric’s warning, their utter stillness draining the courage of the men at the walls with every passing second.

  “Where have they come from?” asked Carlomax, standing beside Leofric with his bow at the ready and a quiver full of arrows.

  “From deep in the forest,” said Leofric. “They are the heralds of the Red Duke.”

  “The Red Duke!” hissed Carlomax, his handsome features twisted in the fear that such a name carried for the people of Aquitaine. “He rises again?”

  Leofric nodded. “I believe he will soon. Havelock and I were riding for the duke’s lands bearing warning when we came upon your village.”

  “Can we hold them?” asked Carlomax. “There are quite a lot of them…”

  “We’ll hold them,” promised Leofric, casting his gaze along the length of the palisade wall. “By my honour, we will hold them.”

  Like a wind driven before a
storm, the fear of these dreadful creatures reached outwards, and Leofric could see that each man’s heart was icy with the chill of the grave at the very unnaturalness of the risen dead.

  Though the men on the walls were clearly brave, Leofric knew that their courage balanced on a knife-edge and that they needed some fire in their bellies if they weren’t to flee in terror from the first charge.

  Leofric marched along the length of the wall facing the undead, lifting his white bladed sword high so that every man could see its purity in the face of such evil.

  “Men of Bretonnia!” he shouted. “You will hold these walls!”

  “Why should we listen to you?” cried a voice in the darkness.

  “If you want to live, you will listen to him!” returned Carlomax.

  Leofric nodded his thanks and continued. He had thought to appeal to their duty to the king, but had thought the better of it when he saw the number of Herrimault cloaks among the villagers. As much as he had considered them little more than bandits before today, he was savvy enough to know that their skill with a bow would be useful in the coming fight.

  “You are right to question me, but I say this not as an order, but as a statement of fact. You have to hold these walls, for if you do not, your families will die and your homes will become your graves. At least until fell sorcery brings your spirit back to your dead flesh and you are denied eternal rest.”

  He could see the horror of such a thought writ large on every face, knowing that the fear of such a fate would rouse each man to great deeds.

  “Your courage and strength will decide if you live or die tonight, so if you fight not for the king or your lord, fight for that. No grand gestures or lordly ambitions will be satisfied by this battle, only survival. I have fought things like this before and I tell you now they can be defeated. Cut them down as you would an orc or beast, but be wary of them rising again. Destroy the head if you can or smash the ribcage. Though these things have no hearts that beat as ours do, a mortal blow will still destroy them. Fight hard and may the Lady guide your arms!”

  “Derrevin!” shouted Carlomax, seeing that Leofric had finished.

  “Libre!” cheered the men of the village in response.

  “Nice speech, my lord,” said Havelock, nocking an arrow to his bow, “but I think his was punchier.”

  “Evidently,” agreed Leofric as the chant of “Libre! Libre! Libre!” echoed through the darkness.

  Leofric gripped his sword a little tighter as he saw that the time for speeches and waiting was over as the army of undead began its advance on the village. Marching in ordered squares a general of the Empire would have been proud of, the dead warriors tramped in silence towards the walls, the only sound the clink and scrape of rusted chainmail on bone.

  “Steady!” shouted Carlomax, nocking an arrow and pulling his bowstring tight. For a moment Leofric wished he had a bow, but then shook his head at such foolishness… a knight with a bow! He chuckled at the idea and knew he had spent too much time in Derrevin Libre if its revolutionary ideals were starting to put such thoughts in his head.

  “Loose!” shouted Carlomax and a flurry of arrows slashed towards the marching warriors.

  As Leofric had said, the undead could indeed be brought down, and a dozen skeletons collapsed into jumbled piles of bone as the magic binding their form together was undone. The remainder paid these losses no heed and came on, uncaring of the volleys of shafts that punched through skulls or severed spines.

  Though dozens fell with each volley, there were hundreds more and Leofric knew that within moments the enemy would be at the walls. Dark fear spread like a bow wave before the undead and Leofric could see many shafts loosed in haste from shaking hands thud harmlessly into the ground.

  “Bretonnia!” he shouted. “The spirit of Gilles le Breton is in each of you! Do not give in to the fear! Remember that your loved ones depend on your courage!”

  Further words were wasted as the undead warriors slammed into the wall and Leofric felt the logs sway as the implacable will of the Necromancer gave the undead strength. Ancient sword blades hacked into the timbers and skeletal hands dug into the gnarled bark as dead warriors hauled themselves towards the parapet.

  A leering skull encased in a fluted helmet of bronze appeared before Leofric and he swept his sword through the neck, sending the body tumbling to the earth. No sooner had it vanished than yet more appeared. The Blade of Midnight smote them down, but armoured skeletons clambered over the sharpened logs all along the length of the wall.

  The villagers of Derrevin Libre hacked at them with axes and stabbed them from the walls with their spears, but for some the horror of the living dead was too much and they broke and ran from the battle. Havelock sent shaft after shaft into the horde at the bottom of the wall as they chopped at the logs or slithered over the bones of the fallen.

  Screams of fear and pain filled the air as ancient blades and clawed hands tore at warm flesh and Leofric hacked his way through the dead to where the fighting was thickest, bellowing cries to the Lady and the King as he smashed the undead from the walls.

  Carlomax held a section of wall above the gate, his sword battering skeletons from the walls with every stroke. Leofric could see that the man was reasonably skilled with a sword, and what he lacked in elegance, he made up for in ferocity.

  The night rang to the clash of iron on bronze, the battle fought in the flickering glow of torches set on the wall. Leofric heard wailing screams and turned to see the men on the wall to his right shrieking like banshees and clawing at their flesh in agony. Age-withered flesh slid from their muscles and wasted organs blistered as they ruptured and turned to dust.

  “No!” shouted Leofric, tasting the rank odour of dark magic on the air. He risked a glance to the hillside where the undead champion and the necromancer watched the battle below. Leaping scads of power swirled around the dread sorcerer.

  Even as he returned his gaze to the battle, he saw it was hopeless. Skeletal warriors had footholds along the wall and the men of Derrevin Libre who had fallen were even now climbing to their feet to hurl themselves at their former comrades with monstrous hunger.

  “Carlomax! Havelock!” shouted Leofric. “The sorcerer!”

  He had no way of knowing whether or not his words had been heard as he fought his way along the wall, hacking a path through the living dead. He saw Havelock pinned against the inner face of the wall by a skeleton attempting to throttle the life from him, while Carlomax battled a trio of armoured skeletons. Leofric killed the first and kicked the second over the wall as Carlomax despatched the last.

  He hacked his sword through the spine of the skeleton attacking Havelock and, together with Carlomax, the three of them formed a fighting wedge above the gate.

  “My thanks,” breathed Carlomax. “I don’t think I could have taken them all.”

  Leofric nodded and said, “We can’t hold them like this.”

  “No,” agreed Carlomax. “What do you suggest?”

  “Something more direct,” said Leofric, pointing to the two dark figures that observed the battle from their vantage point at the treeline. “I need to get them down here!”

  “What?” said Carlomax. “Are you mad?”

  A thunderous crash and crack of shorn timbers sounded from below and Havelock shouted, “The gate!” as a white blur galloped through the village towards the wall.

  “Be ready for my shout!” yelled Leofric as he dropped from the parapet and onto the back of Aeneor. Leofric yelled an oath to the Lady, and rode into the gateway, where a dozen skeletons pushed through with spears lowered. He smashed their blades aside and bludgeoned them to splinters with the weight of his charge and the brutality of his sword blows.

  Aeneor reared in the gateway before the advancing horde of the dead, Leofric’s Blade of Midnight throwing off loops of white fire that reflected from the insides of the skulls of the warriors before him.

  “Come on then, you dead bastards!” he shouted. “I’ll
kill you for good this time!”

  A shadow loomed beyond the gateway and he urged Aeneor onwards, leaping the splintered ruin of the gate and scattering the skeletal warriors before him. His sword cut skulls from necks and arms from shoulders as he cut a deadly swathe through the enemy, but beyond the press of bone and bronze at the gateway, he saw what he had been hoping for.

  Mounted on his dark steed, the undead champion awaited him, the necromancer hunched in his shadow and dark coils of magic leaping from his wizened fingers.

  “Carlomax! Havelock!” called Leofric. “Now! Shoot!”

  A pair of arrows leapt from the walls and hammered into the champion’s breastplate, but the dead warrior appeared not to notice them.

  “Not him!” shouted Leofric, but further words were impossible as the champion charged towards him, the eyes of his terrifying black steed burning with dreadful malice. Leofric knew his strength was not the equal of this warrior, but he was no man’s inferior on horseback. He had toppled Chilfroy of Artois and would be damned if this creature of darkness was going to be the death of him.

  The distance between the two warriors closed rapidly and Leofric swayed aside at the last possible second as the champion’s sword struck to deal him a mortal blow. The Blade of Midnight turned aside the blow and Leofric lunged, the tip of the blade spearing the heart of the champion’s obsidian amulet and splitting it apart with a hideous crack of thunder.

  The champion gave a cry of fury as Aeneor turned on the spot and Leofric swept his sword out in a wide arc as a pair of arrows slashed through the air above him.

  Even amid the clamour of battle and the screams of the dying, Leofric heard the thud of arrows striking flesh and the hollow clang as his sword smashed the undead champion’s helmet and skull to shards.

  The dark steed rode on for a moment before its substance began to unravel and it finally collapsed into a clattering pile of dead flesh and bones. The fallen champion was pitched from the saddle, his own form coming apart as the will that held him to the mortal world fled his ruined shell.

  Leofric lifted his sword in victory as he saw the necromancer struggle to pull Carlomax and Havelock’s arrows from his chest, but it was a futile gesture and Leofric watched as dissolution rendered his flesh down to naught but dust.