[Angelika Fleischer 02] - Sacred Flesh Read online

  Devorah edged away from her. She ignored the girl, her attention now fixed on Franziskus. “Flow many husbands do you think I’ve had, young Franziskus?”

  “Only one at a time, 1 should hope.”

  She caromed a jolly punch off his shoulder. “A japester! How delightful! Five, Franziskus, I’ve had five husbands. Each one ideally suited, more or less, to my circumstances at the time. The first ones had money. And once I had their money, I made certain the later ones had… something else.”

  She grabbed Franziskus’ buttock, giving it a lingering, appreciative squeeze.

  “Milady…” Franziskus protested.

  Kinge Kloster chortled. “I’m not a lady and I know you want to seem shocked but are secretly relieved by my forwardness. It was the same way with my previous husband, Baldwin. Muscular but shy. He was grateful that a woman of experience came along to take his reins in her teeth. Always said so.”

  Devorah spoke up. “What dreadful fate befell poor Baldwin?”

  The widow’s expression turned mournful—or as mournful as her painted smile allowed. “He was taken in the night, by some ghost or daemon, I was awakened by our bedroom shutter banging in the wind, and my sad, beautiful boy was gone. The mattress was still warm where he had lain. A dreadful loss.”

  “So you are going to the Holy Mountain to pray for Baldwin’s return?” asked Devorah.

  “I would not so impose on Shallya’s powers. A replacement will do me fine.”

  Franziskus saw movement on the fringes of his vision. He stepped back to peer into the woods. To shield the ladies from undue alarm, he kept his manner calm.

  “As you say, Widow Kloster,” said Devorah, “you are worldly and I am not. But is your attitude toward love not a little… mercenary?”

  The widow’s reply began with a laugh. Franziskus only half-heard it, his ears perked for untoward sounds from the trees. Then the smell hit him—the tell-tale sour vinegar of goblin sweat. He hauled his sabre from his scabbard. “Angelika!” he shouted. “Goblins!”

  They came from the tops of the tallest pines, licking down the trees like green flames. There were at least a couple dozen of the hunched, human-shaped creatures, and they were coming at Franziskus and the ladies from all sides. They chittered and hissed, their tiny red eyes gleaming with violent malice. Their faces were pointed, oversized, and angular. They had big noses, sharp ears and spear-tip chins.

  The goblins’ greasy hides were a variety of forest colours, and their brownish warts and mottles lent them added camouflage. Some had clad themselves in furs, others in armour. Still others wore baggy, oversized clothing taken from waylaid travellers that were still stained with the blood of their original owners. A few were completely naked, save for a few splotches of war paint. They held crude, jagged daggers in their knotty little fists. They were four to five feet high, gobbets of muscle wired to their bony frames and they moved with an oddly riveting, crab-wise agility. Franziskus had fought goblins before. Although less frightening than their larger, braver cousins, the orcs, they were cunning hit-and-run lighters. He didn’t see or smell any of the giant wolves that some goblins rode, and was thankful for that: the mounts were generally deadlier than their riders.

  Goblins hit the flatland running and loped at Franziskus. They saw his big, swinging blade and altered their course to swerve around him, dashing at the sister and the widow. Kinge Kloster screamed, “Franziskus! Save me!”

  Franziskus lunged to Devorah’s side, stabbing his blade downwards to impale a naked goblin. Pinned to the ground, it bucked and writhed. Franziskus kept his grip on its hilt and worked the sword back and forth inside the goblin’s screaming body until he felt the blade get between vertebrae. Then he twisted it. Crunching ensued; the goblin stopped moving.

  Another leapt at Franziskus’ face. He smashed it with his elbow. As it went down on its behind, he planted his boot in its crotch. It caterwauled furiously until Franziskus brought his blade chopping down into its throat. Thick, gluey goblin blood, hot and sticky, squirted up onto Franziskus’ face, matting his long blond locks to his tunic. He heard the widow screaming and turned her way. Then he saw that Devorah had a goblin clawing its way up her leg. He dived at it, bringing his sabre down like a cleaver, half-severing its left leg at the knee joint. It gargled, arterial blood firing into the air behind it, but it kept on clawing at Devorah, shredding her habit, exposing her pale, thin legs. Franziskus stabbed down with the tip of his sabre half a dozen times, not stopping until the thing went entirely limp.

  Franziskus looked around for the widow. He saw her being dragged away by a quintet of armoured goblins, one of whom had shoved its fingers into her squealing mouth. Another goblin dashed from the bottom of a tree at Devorah. Franziskus stepped into its path, and used his blade like a bat to clobber it in the face, flattening its nose and sending a shower of malformed teeth raining down onto the forest floor. It fell back, stunned. Franziskus brought his blade back over his head, readying himself for a powerful slashing blow. The bleeding goblin turned tail and pelted for the trees, scrabbling on all fours like a wounded dog.

  Franziskus called again for help from the camp but saw that they, too, were besieged. Angelika had rounded the able-bodied men into a circular formation around the less robust pilgrims; their weapons pointed outwards at the charging gobbos. Brother Lemoine smacked a goblin with his staff; it grabbed on tight, so he hefted it into the air like a massive fish and brought it crashing into a rock. It twitched, played dead for a moment then ran off, limping. One of its comrades took a dagger in the eye as Angelika broke from the formation to run Franziskus’ way.

  Franziskus heard a crashing beside him and wheeled just in time to incise a cut in another goblin’s brow. Blood dripped into the creature’s eyes. Franziskus kicked its blade from its hand and then swung again at its head, slicing off the tip of its cauliflower ear.

  A trio of goblins rallied about twenty yards away and loped in together, brandishing daggers and yelling war cries in their discordant, throaty language. Franziskus backed into Devorah until he could feel the heat of her slim body against his. “There’s a dagger in my belt,” he told Devorah. “Take it.”

  “I don’t—” said Devorah.

  “Take it!”

  “I don’t—”

  The goblins charged; Franziskus could tell that his dagger was still in its sheath.

  Franziskus readied his next blow for the biggest of the goblins, which ran in the middle, its eyes locked on his. He would have to take it down in a single strike and then deal with the others who would start circling Devorah. The goblin carried a big wooden shield, haphazardly studded with nails and bits of melted lead, and had scraggly white mutton chops extruding from its cheeks. It opened its mouth and lolled out a long, veiny tongue.

  It was within range and Franziskus sent his sword hammering down. The goblin deflected the blow with its shield then banged the edge of the shield up into Franziskus’ armpit, throwing its weight onto him, knocking him off his feet. Franziskus’ perceptions slowed for the ensuing moment of flight. He sailed backwards through the air, apparently for an eternity, his sword-arm helplessly splayed out at his side. The mutton-chopped goblin was lying on his chest, its eyes rolling crazily back in its skull. Then came the awareness of impact, followed by wracking, generalised pain—

  Then time started up again.

  The goblin slavered into Franziskus’ face and raised its fist, which it had wrapped in a plate-mail glove studded with rusty spikes. At the same time it jammed its other forearm under Franziskus’ jaw, holding him still to receive the blow. It gave itself a moment to chortle. A dagger sprouted from its neck, its point piercing its Adam’s apple from the inside. The goblin slumped onto Franziskus’ chest. Franziskus rolled it over onto the ground. He looked at Angelika’s second dagger, shoved to the hilt in the back of his enemy’s neck.

  Her face, sweaty and scratched, loomed over his. She held out her hand for him. He took it and got to his feet. He saw R
ichart Pfeffer, the landowner, comforting Devorah, who trembled in his arms. “I couldn’t take—”

  she kept saying. “I couldn’t take—”

  Franziskus soon realised that she meant she couldn’t take his dagger from his belt, and blamed herself for it.

  “Your hide leaking?” Angelika asked, examining him.

  “Not unduly,” replied Franziskus.

  Richart’s eyes met his, and the landholder stepped aside for him. Devorah rushed into his arms. “I’m sorry; I couldn’t take up your weapon. My faith forbids it.”

  “Of course,” said Franziskus, placing his hand, gummy with goblin blood, on the back of her wimpled head. He pressed her face into his shoulder. “Of course.”

  She pushed away from him, struck by sudden realisation. “The widow!” she exclaimed. “You’ve got to go rescue the widow!”

  A series of grim and knowing looks passed between Angelika, Franziskus and Richart.

  Angelika patted the girl on the back. “The prioress is back with the others,” she said. “She was in the woods when the goblins came, and seems distressed. Go attend to her.”

  Devorah nodded and slowly padded her way out of the trees back to the stream.

  “You owe Richart your thanks,” said Angelika. “I couldn’t have dispatched all three goblins on my own. Not in time, leastways.”

  Franziskus clasped Richart’s hand. “I didn’t see you.”

  “Melee can be confusing,” Richart said.

  “How many of us are any good in a fight?” Angelika asked.

  “The three of us,” said Richart, studying a sizeable slash across the back of his right hand. The young physic would have to part with more of his bandages.

  Franziskus felt a pang of offence that the balding landowner had suddenly been admitted to the decision-making circle without his say-so, but decided that the feeling was envious and unworthy, so suppressed it.

  Richart continued his list: “The shipman. Altman and Lemoine, at a pinch. The doctor and the summoner, perhaps.”

  “We all know what state the widow’s in now—if she’s lucky,” said Angelika. “But for the morale of the others, we can’t seem to callously abandon her.”

  “On the other hand,” said Richart, “you don’t want to get anyone else killed for the sake of her corpse.”

  “Indeed,” said Angelika. “So we can’t send the entire group crashing into the bush to find her. Nor can we leave them here undefended while we go off as a search party.”

  The three of them spent a quarter hour reiterating the disagreeable choices they faced. Finally they decided that Richart would stay with the others while Angelika and Franziskus went out to track the goblins. They’d spend no more than half a day on the search, and would fall back at the merest whiff of another confrontation.

  Angelika and Franziskus set off, leaving Richart to explain where they’d gone. Almost immediately they found a trail of flattened grass and followed it. A damp, dark substance spattered the grass.

  “Blood,” said Franziskus.

  Angelika nodded. She sniffed the air. No vinegar smell. She looked up into the tree-tops. No signs of goblins. They followed the trail as it wound around a rotten log. Behind it they found the widow’s corpse, its torso opened up to expose the organs inside. Franziskus blanched. Angelika put the back of her hand across his chest, to stop him from going ahead.

  Angelika crouched. She squinted, searching for snares or tripwires. She checked the ground beneath the body, in case the goblins had dragged her onto a deadfall. “It’s not trapped,” she said. “I thought they might have taken her to lure us out here. But I don’t see any sign of them.”

  “Why did they take her, then?”

  Angelika shrugged. “Why do goblins prey on anyone? They thought she might be carrying some shiny things.” She squatted over the widow’s feet and took a tentative tug at them. A gentle sloshing noise arose from her body cavity, as her innards shifted. Angelika’s face wrinkled up in revulsion. “This will be messy work. I wish we had a tarpaulin.”

  “Perhaps we should bury her here. Spare the others the sight of her.”

  “Then they’ll just imagine ten times worse. Here, help me roll her. We’ll let her drain out a bit before we try to move her.”

  Franziskus paled but got on his knees to help roll the widow nonetheless. “Once more I am proven the fool,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “I thought guarding a few pilgrims would prove less gruesome than our usual pursuits.”

  They stood back as Kloster’s juices soaked into the earth. Angelika tensed at a scrabbling sound. They whirled, but saw only a pair of squirrels chasing one another around the trunk of a beech tree. They waited. They hefted the corpse—Angelika taking the arms and Franziskus, the legs—and trudged warily back in the direction of the stream.

  When they could see the stream through the trees, they set the body down. They approached the group, which Richart had gathered into a small knot along the stream-bed. Angelika beckoned him forward and told him what had happened.

  “How fares your search?” asked Stefan, the advocate.

  Angelika ignored him.

  “We all have a right to know!” he called.

  Angelika stared him down. “Then go among her things and gather up some bedding. We need a shroud.”

  Stefan appeared stricken. He stood rooted in place. Devorah got the widow’s bedroll and went to Franziskus’ side with it. He went to take it from her, but she kept it.

  “I’ll attend to her,” she said. “It is nothing new to me. I have attended to sisters at the cloister, after their passing.”

  “Very well,” said Angelika, leading Devorah to the corpse. As if tucking her in for the night, Devorah gently rolled Kinge Kloster’s mortal remnants into the bedding. Angelika watched over her.

  “I thought unmerciful thoughts about her, moments before she was taken,” Devorah confessed.

  “She was an annoying person,” replied Angelika. “The manner of her death doesn’t change that.”

  “It is my duty to rise above.”

  Angelika did not have a reply. The prioress could give the girl whatever penance or counsel she required. For her part, Angelika was glad someone else was willing to do the dirty work, for once.

  She helped the girl carry the body to the stream, where the group of pilgrims parted, eyes averted. Devorah unwrapped the widow, stripped her of her bloodied clothing, and washed her body with the rags. The pilgrims broke up. Normally, Angelika would have warned them to be careful and to stick together, but in this instance the point seemed obvious. The stream ran briefly red then was clear again.

  Angelika took Franziskus and Richart aside as the young sister continued her ministrations. “We’ll need to get the widow quickly into the ground and get ourselves moving,” Angelika said. They spoke for a while about goblins, trading guesses on the odds of a return sally.

  Devorah approached, the sleeves of her habit pushed up past her elbows, her hands and forearms damp. “She’s ready,” said the sister.

  “Then let’s get a hole dug,” said Angelika.

  Richart cast his gaze around the camp. “I have business to attend to,” he said, and marched off into the trees.

  Franziskus grunted self-righteously. “Herr Pfeffer turns out to be a shirker, when it comes to the spadework.”

  “Why should that surprise you?” asked Angelika, as they went to find the shovels. “The two of you come from the same stock, don’t you?”

  “I think not,” Franziskus said, working to keep the sniff of snobbery out of his tone. “Nothing in his bearing suggests a noble education. He most likely came by his land holdings through a soldier’s grant—or by trade, even.”

  “Heaven forbid,” said Angelika, tossing him a shovel. He grabbed it and they walked over a small hump in the earth in search of an appropriately sheltered spot. “You think she’d like it here?”

  “I’m sure she’d prefer to be in some handsome y
oung fellow’s bed.”

  “Wouldn’t we all?”

  They started digging.

  A scream rang out.

  Friar Gerhold came running at them, mouth open wide, snowy hair askew, his grimy rope belt flying out behind him. “The goblins have been back!” he wailed. “They’ve killed the bailiff!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “No goblin did this,” said Angelika, kneeling over Altman’s body. He was sprawled where the friar had found him, his eyes staring heavenwards. The bailiffs well-fattened features had settled into a frozen glare of fright and outrage.

  The others gathered all around Angelika, hemming her in. She gestured for them to move back, and they did, only to creep up again almost immediately.

  “But that’s a goblin blade!” exclaimed Jurg. Indeed, a jagged goblin dagger, still slick with the bailiff’s blood, lay in the pine needles, a few feet from the body.

  “It certainly is,” said Angelika, picking it up. “And that’s why it can’t have been a goblin who did this. To you or me, this dagger’s trash —it hardly counts as a weapon. But to a wretched gobbo, a blade like this would be his most precious possession. You never see a goblin leave his weapon on the battlefield.”

  “But it’s quite evident that the dagger’s covered in blood,” said Brother Lemoine.

  Angelika held the blade up to the fatal wound—a jagged gash cut across Altman’s throat. “Oh, this is the weapon that did it, all right. The serrations match the wound. It’s just that it was wielded by someone other than a goblin.”

  Rausch was next to object. “Who else but a goblin would use a goblin weapon?”

  Angelika lay the weapon down in the grass and rose to her feet. “Don’t tell me you find this anything but obvious.”

  The pilgrims indicated universal bafflement.

  “One of you did it,” Angelika said. She kept her attention on the corpse, hoping that Franziskus would be clever enough to watch for telltale signs of guilt.