Rich Larson - [BCS289 S01] - The Star Plague (html) Read online

  Symond’s robes are streaked with gleaming blood. For a moment he stands there, swaying. Then he sinks to his knees. “We need your help, Northman,” he says. “Please come back to the monastery.”

  Bragi throws new branches onto the fire, so it spits and crackles, then takes a seat. Symond is staring into the flames, rocking back and forth on his haunches. The young priest’s eyes are elsewhere. His cheek twitches, like someone is prodding it with an unseen finger.

  “I don’t understand,” Bragi says. “He is one. You are thirty.”

  Symond looks over. He shakes his head. “Brother Litton is not a man anymore. The demon that drives him makes him as strong as a bear. And there is worse. Brother Eckhart.” He sucks in a breath. “Brother Eckhart, who was killed, now walks. I saw it myself. I saw his body revived. He walks and does the demon’s bidding. So do the others who Brother Litton felled with his hands.”

  Bragi considers the story, looking into the mangled face of the wolf. He knows of men who gain the strength of wild animals in combat, but it’s hard to imagine Litton as one of them. As for the slain returning to do battle, he never believed the stories of savage draugar guarding their own graves. Such things happen only in Odin’s hall.

  “Whatever’s happened is not my doing,” Bragi says. “And not the doing of my gods unless they’re very drunk.”

  “I agree,” Symond says. “I agree, I agree. But this is why you are here, all the same.” He looks at him, eyes glistening with tears. “You were sent here to help us fight this evil. To redeem your soul. That is why you came here, even if you did not know it.”

  Bragi snorts. “That is not why I came here.”

  “You are a fighter.” Symond’s voice is pleading. “We are not. We need your help.”

  “You ask me to fight spirits.” Bragi spits into the fire. “You’re a priest, and you ask me to fight spirits.”

  “I ask you to fight the bodies of men.”

  “Men strong as bears?”

  Symond shudders. “Only Brother Litton. The dead ones, they are no stronger than they were in life. But they are fierce, and there are six of them. Maybe more now. It happened very quickly.” His gaze goes to the dead wolf, as if he is noticing it for the first time. “How did you kill that beast?”

  Bragi clacks his teeth together. “I bit it.”

  Symond nods solemnly. “You are a fighter,” he repeats. “We are not. There are twelve of us barricaded in the bell tower. I climbed from the window and over the wall, to search for you, so now there are eleven. Five brothers have locked themselves in the scriptorium. We called to them. And there may be more scattered around the monastery, hiding.”

  “Maybe your dead god punishes you,” Bragi says. “And I should not interfere.”

  Symond’s voice grows angry for the first time. “You would be dead without us, Northman. You would have wandered off a cliff, or your wounds would have festered. We saved you. God put us in place to save you, and now he has put you in place to save us. Why else would a man like you find yourself in a monastery?”

  Bragi hates being indebted. He rises to his feet. “Oh, I’ve been in a monastery before, priest. Did you not know that? Did you not guess that?”

  Startled, Symond shakes his head.

  “Two years ago we came ashore in the place you call Northumbria,” Bragi says, looming over the young priest. “We found a strange stone temple and we slaughtered everyone inside. We took anything that shone. There was an old man, like the one you call father, and we drowned him in the sea.”

  Symond’s eyes are welling with tears again. His face twists. “I know you are wicked,” he says, voice trembling. “I know you are pagani. But all deeds can be forgiven.”

  A pang of guilt slices through Bragi’s gut. He sits back down. “I am even more wicked than you know,” he says. “I did not come here by my choice. I am útlagi.”

  “I do not know this word,” Symond whispers, staring into the fire.

  “Better you don’t,” Bragi says.

  They are silent for a moment, then Symond raises his head. “Brother Abelforth saved the baby goat. He scooped it into his arms as we ran. It’s in the bell tower with us.”

  Bragi barks a sharp laugh. Then he grinds his teeth together. He does not think he can be redeemed in a foreign land. He does not think he can fight spirits and win. But he has nothing left to lose. He reaches over and cups Symond’s face in his hand.

  “I will go with you,” he says. “I will help you. But only because you remind me so much of my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” Symond echoes.

  Bragi nods. “Now, where is my axe?” he demands. “And where is my bitter-biting blade?”

  It feels good to go víkingr again, even if his only shield-mate is a small and terrified foreigner. They approach the monastery from the north and circle around. The bell has stopped ringing, which seems to worry Symond, but the gates are still shut, as they were when Bragi left. That means the count is unchanged: eleven priests in the bell tower, five in the scriptorium, six who may be in hiding or be living corpses, six who are certainly living corpses, and one who has the strength of a bear. Bragi recites it in his mind as they cross the fallow field.

  Out of old habit he moves low and silent through the tall grasses. The thrill of raiding thrums in his bones and bubbles in his blood. He still only half-believes the priest’s story. Maybe there is a spreading madness within the walls of the monastery. Maybe the panicked priests are hiding from shadows, from each other. But if there is anything to be killed, he wants to kill it. Fighting the wolf has reawakened him.

  “Under the ash tree,” Symond whispers.

  They go to the tree where Litton beat himself. It takes only a few moments of scrabbling in the dirt to find the spot where the soil is loose. They dig with their bare hands, clawing up the damp earth and flinging it aside. When Bragi sees the shape of his axe shaft emerging he shoves Symond away to dig on his own.

  He frees his axe first, then his sword in its wooden scabbard. Both edges of the blade are still keen, but the axe head is not as sharp as it should be and he wonders if the priests used it to chop wood while he was sick abed. He straps both weapons into place, familiar weight against his hipbones. He has no shield, but Symond says the living corpses bear no arms, so it will not be missed.

  There are flecks of dark blood on the pale bark of the ash tree. Litton’s blood, or else the blood of the priest he murdered. Bragi sees a knot in the trunk that reminds him of a gaping eye socket. For a moment the ash tree is Yggdrasil, and he can picture Odin hanging from it, dead for nine days and nights. He puts his hand against the smooth bark and mutters a prayer even though the gods detest him.

  Clouds split apart overhead. The fields and monastery are illuminated now by a sliver of moon, Odin’s remaining eye cracked open to watch the coming bloodshed.

  “Beautiful,” Bragi says.

  Symond makes the sign of his own hanged god, and they go together to the wall.

  There are cracks in the weathered stone, enough for a toehold, a fingerhold. Bragi has scaled cliffs, and this wall gives him no trouble. He’s pleased to find that Symond climbs well despite his soft hands; they are at the top in only a moment. He hooks his elbows over the edge and anchors himself while he surveys the yard. At first he sees nothing, even with the moonlight.

  “In the shadows by the gate,” Symond breathes.

  Bragi looks, squinting as hard as he can. His eyes are still weak. Finally he sees it: the shape of a man crouched unnaturally still. Symond points out the others in turn. They’re scattered around the yard, some of them naked, some still cloaked in their rough robe. All are crouched and still, more like carvings than men. It makes the skin of his neck prickle cold. He counts eight and guesses that one of them must be Litton.

  “The pen,” Symond murmurs.

  Bragi hauls himself up onto the top of the wall for a better vantage point. The animals are all dead, piled in a single heap of blood-sticky
wool and hooves—he cannot tell if Siv is among them; he has to trust Symond’s word. But something else is moving in the straw. A single priest slinks around the heap of carcasses. His movements are jerky and frightened. Bragi watches as he creeps toward the gate.

  Symond grunts, pulls, joins him on top of the wall. “He doesn’t see the one waiting there,” he says. “We have to warn him.”

  Bragi nods, then reaches and hooks his axe blade under Symond’s chin. He holds it there without taking his eyes off the scene. “If you shout, Litton will hear us,” he says. “They are dead, and maybe deaf, but you say he’s not. So you will not shout.”

  Symond’s throat bobs, but he stays silent as the priest scurries toward his doom. Bragi watches intently. The priest is reaching for the iron locking bar of the gate when the crouched corpse jerks upright. It makes no sound, but it moves quickly, reaching both hands for the priest’s throat. He stumbles back with a hoarse wail.

  The other crouchers are rising now, drawn to the commotion. They move like sleepwalkers, scuffing their feet in the dirt, arms hanging by their sides. Bragi sees the one called Eckhart, naked and riddled with black wounds. They surround the escaping priest in a swarm, hiding him from view.

  An eerie keening noise makes the hairs stand up on Bragi’s arms. The crouchers go still; he can see the movement of the priest’s struggling, trying to wriggle out from under their weight. A figure emerges from the monastery, and Bragi knows it must be Litton, but it no longer moves like him. There is no slouching.

  Instead he moves with an uncanny grace, predatory, like the tuft-eared ló Bragi once hunted through a snowstorm. He has grown taller: his limbs are longer and nearly skeletal. The flesh of his upper body seems disconnected from the rest of him, wobbling under his rough robe as he walks.

  The Litton-beast stalks to the gate and bends down over the pinned priest. Bragi can’t see what it does to him, but the priest’s struggles stop. The Litton-beast goes back to the monastery main. The crouchers scatter again, sleepwalking back out into the yard. They each find a place in the dirt and hunker down and grow still.

  By the gate, the newest corpse slowly pulls itself up into a squat.

  “Nine of them now,” Bragi says, pulling his axe away from Symond’s throat. He keeps his voice smooth even as his heart hammers him. “We’ll go to your scriptorium first. Then the bell tower.”

  They creep along the top of the wall until they are a stone’s throw from the east range, the open arched hallway that always reminds Bragi of a giant’s ribcage. It leads to the scriptorium and to the five priests hiding there. He can see only two crouchers in the way.

  “Ready, priest?” Bragi asks.

  “Call me Symond. My name is Symond.” He swallows. “And you are Bragi.”

  Bragi stares. None of the priests struck him as seers. “How do you know my name?”

  “You spoke to yourself often in your sleep,” Symond says. “You are very rude to yourself.”

  Bragi shrugs. “Are you ready, Symond?”

  “I’m ready,” Symond says, but he doesn’t lie well.

  Bragi drops, angling his scabbard up so it doesn’t strike the ground. He stands. Breathes deep. The rust smell is everywhere, now, but so is the stench of blood. By the time his shield-mate thumps down to the dirt behind him, Bragi is on the move, axe in hand. He comes up behind the first croucher and swings hard and fast for its neck.

  He feared in the back of his brain that his weapons would carom harmlessly off the corpse-flesh, or worse, pass through it as through a mist. But the blow feels like any other: it sends the croucher sprawling and blood spurting up toward the moonlit sky. Bragi meets the second croucher as it turns and this time swings upward, cleaving away its lower jaw. More blood splatters his face and a tooth or chip of bone bounces off his forehead.

  He looks back to where Symond is standing like an idiot. “Go to the door,” he snaps. “Tell them to let us in.”

  Symond blinks, then rushes past him through the first archway. Bragi is moving to follow when the croucher stands back up. Its jaw is hanging by only a few threads of flesh, dancing in the air, as it reaches for him with both hands. He ducks underneath and swings for the kneecap. The blow rattles the bones in his axe hand, but it also brings the croucher down with a sickening crack.

  Bragi flips the body over and hacks through the tendons of its calves and thighs, then does the same to the other croucher, methodically as if he is dressing an elk. He will take no chances. A chicken can walk with no head, but nothing can walk with no legs.

  The keening sound comes across the yard as Bragi turns and hurries down the giant’s ribcage, passing under the great stone arches. Symond is slapping his palm against the door to the scriptorium, pleading in Anglish. He hears muffled voices debating inside.

  “Why aren’t they opening the door?” he demands.

  Symond ignores him and keeps pleading. Bragi knows what makes the keening noise, and now he looks back to see the other crouchers sleepwalking toward them and the Litton-beast looming behind like a stretched shadow. His skin goes gooseflesh again. He tells himself it’s from the keening noise and not from terror.

  The crouchers pass under the archway, but the Litton-beast has grown too tall—Litton’s bowl-shaved head cracks against the stone and snaps backward at an angle. It barely seems to notice. Skull scrapes against stone as it moves forward, leaving a dark smear. Litton’s neck flops and twists.

  “Make them open this fucking door,” Bragi says. “Please.”

  The Litton-beast hunches lower, coming faster now, shoving the crouchers aside as if they are a child’s dolls. Symond is howling in Anglish, pounding on the door. Bragi’s swordhand is singing, so he draws his blade and axe both. He clenches his teeth.

  The door swings open and they barrel inside. Bragi catches a jumbled glimpse of the priests, illuminated by lamplight, then he whirls and shoves the door shut with his shoulder. The priests are dragging a heavy table forward to barricade it. Bragi braces himself for the wood to break and splinter against him, for the Litton-beast to crash through it with the strength of a bear.

  He waits for one breath. The table catches against the floor with a screech.

  Two breaths. The table rises; Bragi helps them turn it and slam it up against the door.

  The Litton-beast’s blow never comes. Bragi exhales. The priests step back from the door. They start babbling at Symond. They are ruddy in the face. Bragi catches a familiar scent, so he grabs the nearest of them by the chin and thumbs back his lips. The man gives an indignant squawk. His teeth are stained wine-red.

  “Let’s be friends,” Bragi says. “Where is the cask?”

  The cask is empty. Bragi finds it sitting on one of the carved writing tables and shakes it, but there is not even the smallest slosh. He sticks his tongue through the hole and licks the wine-soaked wood. Symond and the other priests are debating in Anglish, but he clangs his axe against the floor until they all stop and look over at him.

  “You greedy-gutted guzzlers,” he says. “I had nothing but watery ale while you hid this wine from me, and now you’ve drunk it all. Burst your bellies, you greedy-gutted guzzlers.” He points at Symond. “Tell them what I said. Make it rhyme in the Anglish way of rhyming.”

  “I cannot rhyme it,” Symond says. “But they do apologize to us.” He gives the other priests an acid glance. “For not letting us in. They thought it was the demon’s trick. They say Brother Litton visited them some hours ago and spoke to them through the door.”

  Bragi remembers the Litton-beast’s head thrown backward, the jagged nub of spine emerging from its flesh, and doubts it can speak like a man any longer. “They are drunk,” he says. “And they are cowards. What did he say when he spoke?”

  Symond grimaces. “He begged for death. He said again that he is the husband.”

  Bragi nods. “I need paint.”

  “Paint? For what?” Symond is distracted; the other priests are muttering again, voices pitched with
panic. “On the tables,” he mutters. “There’s ink on the tables.”

  Bragi half-listens to the swelling storm of argument while he goes down the row of tables. This is where the priests make their runes, with delicate stretched skins and paints instead of stone and chisel. The markings are incomprehensible, but there are images in some places, colorful figures with their heads ringed in light.

  He finds a small pot of dark blue paint and brings it back to where the priests are now shouting over each other. Symond is defiant, chest puffed out, and he barks the same word over and over until the older men fall silent. Bragi can’t understand the speech, but he knows the young priest is staking a claim. His eyes have a fury in them, and he looks at each of his brothers until they look away. When he finally stops speaking, they raise no protest.

  “Good,” Bragi says. “You shut them up.”

  “I offered them a theory,” Symond says, voice clipped. “They believe this demon is God’s punishment visited upon us. But I think it may be a natural thing.”

  Bragi laughs, but Symond only frowns. “Oh. You are not joking.”

  “We have all seen plagues that drive men to madness,” Symond says. “They are a natural thing, as they also affect animals, who have no spirits. I think Brother Litton is infected by a plague, a star plague, and his touch passes it on.”

  “To the dead?” Bragi asks. “The dead cannot be sick. They are dead.”

  Symond shakes his head. “I don’t know. But I know that when you cut them down, they bled like living men. The important thing is that our death is not God’s will. So we can escape it.” He finally sees the pot of paint in Bragi’s hand. “That is our most valuable color. It’s made from crushed shells.” His face is wistful. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “I like it,” Bragi agrees, and smashes the pot against the floor. He drags his fingers through the slime and paints circles beneath his eyes, draws clawmarks outward across his cheeks, so that when he battles the Litton-beast he will be a beast himself.

  On impulse, he reaches out with his fingertip and smears Symond’s forehead. The young priest blinks in surprise, but doesn’t pull away. Instead he dips his own fingers in the spilled paint, avoiding the shards of pottery, and after only a moment’s hesitation he drags them across his pale face. He bares his crooked teeth.