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

  “It looks funny when you do it,” Bragi says. “Anyways. On to the bell tower.” He claps Symond solemnly on the shoulder. “If you lied about Siv, I’ll cut off your penis.”

  Symond’s grin shrinks away.

  They reach the scriptorium unimpeded. The crouchers have wandered off again—in that way, they are like dumb beasts or small children—and there’s no sign of the Litton-beast. But Bragi sees it in every shadow. His eyes play tricks, and his nerves are strung taut. It doesn’t help that two of the priests are truly drunk, staggering behind the group and hush-hushing each other.

  Bragi is thinking not only of the Litton-beast but of Symond’s suspicions. Bragi does not like plagues. He knows that he touched Litton when the priest came to him in the night, and worse, he himself was twice at the pit. Maybe he will go mad as well. Maybe his body will twist itself into a new shape. Or maybe, once again, he is carrying the plague but will not grow very sick from it himself.

  He puts it out of his mind as they move back along the east range, ducking through swathes of silvery moonlight, feet scuffing the stone. They will have to pass through the temple, which Bragi normally avoids, to get to the bell tower’s winding staircase. Somewhere the crouchers are waiting. Somewhere the Litton-beast is roaming.

  “Cwelle me, cwelle me,” whispers a voice behind him. “Iċ eom se bonda.”

  Bragi remembers the words; Litton wailed them while he writhed around in the fishing net. He whirls and stabs twice. The first glances off a rib and jars his hand, but the second slides deep with the sound of shearing flesh. Dark blood burbles out of the priest’s gut, soaking into the brown cloth. His eyes widen and he jabbers something to Symond before he collapses to the floor.

  “What did he say to you?” Bragi asks.

  Symond’s eyes are just as wide. “He said it was only a jest.”

  “Oh.” Bragi stares down at the sputtering priest and realizes it’s the drunkest one. “Oh! Tell him it was funny.” He wipes a trickle of sweat from his eye socket. “It’s just that I am very tense.”

  The priests murmur in their prayer language and one muffles a sob in his sleeve, but when Bragi walks onward they follow him. He wishes he was drunk, too.

  There is no lamplight and little moonlight inside the temple. Bragi can see the pronged shapes of the candlesticks in the corners, but they are unlit. He tries to fill in the shadows with what he remembers of the room. He knows there’s a wide open space, where the priests stand or kneel, and beyond it the gold-gilded altar where no blood is ever spilled. Their symbol is everywhere, in silver or wood.

  As his eyes adjust he can make out the largest of the crosses. It hangs on the wall, above the altar, depicting the priests’ dead god with his head bent unnaturally to one side. Symond mouths in the prayer language as he looks at it.

  The staircase to the bell tower is off to the left, behind a heavy wood-and-iron door. Bragi sees no crouchers in their path. He motions for the priests to pass him.

  Something moves in front of the altar.

  Symond draws a sharp breath, gripping his arm. Bragi peels his fingers away. He missed it in the dark, the spindly figure splayed prostate beneath the dead god. Its back is humped and swollen beneath Litton’s blood-spattered robe. He wonders if what remains of the priest is begging his god for death.

  Bragi tightens his hold on his axe and pushes Symond past him, towards the staircase. The Litton-beast is unwary. Unseeing. This might be his best chance to kill it. He creeps forward as the priests scurry past behind him. He sets his feet and takes aim with his axe.

  He hurls it. The axe spins and its blade buries deep with a meat-sound, jerking the Litton-beast forward. It doesn’t screech or howl. Instead it gets to its feet, axe haft poking out from Litton’s robe like a broken bone, and turns to face him. A strange ripple moves through its bloated body, and for a moment Bragi remembers the roiling red dust at the bottom of the pit.

  Then the Litton-beast splits apart. Something hooked and sharp punches through the priest’s flesh and his robe, dragging, slicing. Chunks of muscle and fat splat against the stone floor. The torn robe follows. A leaner shape is emerging from the swollen mass, cutting its way free. Bragi sees Litton’s head and part of his shoulder topple backwards.

  Soon there is nothing of Litton left. There is only a beast, a sort Bragi has never even heard tales of. Its slick skin is deep blue and scab red, a confusion of colors, but as he watches it slowly darkens to black, matching the shadows around the altar. Its body is hunched and angular, with legs long and knobbly as a stork’s.

  Dangling arms end in talons, and another set of limbs wait behind them, these ones folded against its back like featherless wings. They are tipped with blades, hooked butcher knives made of something black and gleaming. One stretches now to scrape the last few strings of Litton’s flesh from its leg, like a man scraping the last scrap of meat from a chicken bone.

  And Bragi sees it true face at last: a fleshy bulb that peels apart like a flower, revealing rows and rows of bone-needle teeth. It has no eyes, but a sort of whip sprouts from its dark skull and hangs out in front of its maw. The tip of it glows a soft pale blue in the gloom.

  One of the priests shrieks. Bragi thinks he would shriek too, if his throat were not dried shut. He draws his blade as the beast stalks forward.

  #

  Its first few steps are languid, unhurried, and it has no eyes, but Bragi can tell he is being measured, judged as either predator or prey. The keening noise comes again, and this time he sees how it’s made: by the beast’s folded knife-limbs rubbing back and forth against each other. From close, the sound sends shivers through his teeth and jaw. It raises every hair on his body. He wonders if the beast is calling to the crouchers, if maybe —

  It lunges at him. He ducks under its outstretched talons and slashes for its belly, but the beast curves itself away from his swinging sword. It hooks his foot out from under him and he slams against the stone floor. His breath leaves in a single slab of air. The talons come clawing. He thrusts, and this time feels flesh. Silvery liquid, too cold to be blood, spatters his face.

  The beast doesn’t make a sound, but it jerks backward. Bragi scrambles to his feet, bellowing for the both of them, and swings hard. One of the knife-limbs flicks out and catches his blade. Bragi pushes; the beast pushes back. Steel grinds. Sparks spit off into the dark. The knife-limb is made of something strong. Bragi is briefly curious.

  Then its twin rises from the beast’s back and suddenly he is fighting two armed men at once. The knife-limbs dart and slash in a blur as he staggers backward, blocking and parrying but giving up ground. The talons swing low; he leaps over the first blow, but the second sends him sprawling.

  He howls. Rolls. A knife-limb pins his arm, shearing through his sleeve and nicking his skin. He can’t bring his sword up to block the twin and now it hovers over him like a butcher’s blade. The beast’s fleshy beak peels open. The pale blue light is dancing in front of his eyes, blinding him. He tries to think of a good curse as the knife-limb falls toward his throat.

  Someone shouts a battle-cry in Anglish. Bragi feels the beast’s body shift, and its black razor clatters against the stone, knocked askew. The wool of his shirt tears as he wrenches his arm free. His shoulder screams in its socket. He screams in the air, and he swings. Blade meets flesh. A silvery spray arcs across the wall, spattering the carving of the dead god.

  He throws his head back and sees Symond still clutching the heavy candlestick with both hands. “We’re the last two!” the priest gasps. “The others are waiting to shut the door!”

  Bragi leaps to his feet, and they run to the stairwell. The beast darts after them. The wood-and-iron door is open; hands beckon them inside. A croucher, drawn by the commotion or by the beast’s call, staggers out of the dark. Bragi cuts it down at the calves with a cleaving blow, not breaking stride. The beast is trailing by a hair’s breadth.

  The priests pull them through and slam the door shut; the beast crash
es against it. Bragi is in a tangle of limbs, smelling sour fear-sweat and feeling rough robes against his face. He struggles upright to see the tip of a knife-limb poke through the hinge gap. He readies his sword.

  The knife-limb pulls away. A priest’s leg trembles against his. They wait and wait and do not breathe until beast’s keening noise recedes into the distance.

  “This night is madness,” Bragi says, and claps Symond on the shoulder.

  Then he’s off, scrambling over and through the frightened priests, accidentally putting his foot between one’s legs as he climbs the staircase. He shoves and clambers until he is at the top of the tower, a bare circle of stone with the great iron bell hanging from wooden beams. Five or six priests are huddled beneath it. Bragi recognizes the very old one that they call Father Wilthrop. More importantly, he recognizes the small white muzzle poking out from behind him.

  Bragi seizes Siv by the middle and hauls the baby goat into his arms. He kisses her head, the nubs where her horns will grow, and buries his nose in her silky fur. “Siv, I was wrong to leave without you,” he murmurs. “Tell me if you are angry. I will understand.”

  Siv bleats. She nibbles at his blood-stained fingers.

  Bragi tucks the little goat under his arm before he stands back up. Symond has joined him at the top, exchanging tearful greetings with one of the younger priests. The others from the stairs have climbed up as well. Two of them have wooden staves. One is the fat priest with the pitching fork. Bragi counts, lets Symond finish his embraces, then grabs him by the face.

  “You weren’t lying about Siv,” he says. “That’s good.”

  Symond’s mouth twitches. “I’ll keep my penis, then.”

  “Yes.” Bragi tongues his teeth. “I’m ready to leave now. If you like, we will all leave together.”

  Symond’s eyes drift towards the staircase. “You are not scared.”

  “We have numbers,” Bragi says, not bothering to correct him. “I crippled three of the crouchers. So they are now six at their fewest, twelve at their most, if all the hiding priests have been found and turned.” He thumps a nearby priest on the chest; the man flinches and Siv bleats. “We here are seventeen. And while they are scattered, we are together.”

  “There is also the demon,” Symond mutters.

  “It’s not a demon,” Bragi says. “It’s a beast.” He wipes a fleck of the silvery fluid from his neck and holds it up. “I think it bleeds. I think this is its blood. So it can be killed. I will kill it.” He surveys the huddled priests. “We’ll make a svinfylking.”

  Symond shakes his head. “I don’t know this word.”

  “We will move all as one,” Bragi says. “Down the stairs, out of the temple, across the yard to the gates. We will be a charging boar.”

  Symond looks at the priests seated under the bell. “Some are old. They’ll move slowly.”

  “They’ll be in the middle,” Bragi says. “So will you. With my goat.” He places Siv into Symond’s arms. “Keep her safe, priest.”

  Symond bundles her against his chest. He frowns. “When you said you had a daughter, was that the truth? Or was it one of your jests?”

  Bragi blinks. “I had a daughter years and years ago,” he admits, because Symond’s face is painted with the same blue ink as his, and because Symond knocked the beast’s knife-limb askew, and because it’s possible all of them will die tonight or soon after. “And a wife. And an unborn child. Then there was a plague.”

  “I’m sorry,” Symond says, and his eyes dart to Bragi’s arm.

  Bragi looks too, and realizes that the beast’s knife-limb sliced skin as well as sleeve. A dark blot of blood is growing there. His stomach churns, but he hides his fear behind his teeth. “If I start to feel strange, I will slit my throat and the tendons of my heels,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

  But he is worried. His belly is filling with thick dark dread. Beasts can be killed, but plagues can’t. He binds his cut and tamps down his fear while Symond explains the svinfylking to the other priests. The one called Father Wilthrop listens and nods his gray head.

  Bragi watches as they all kneel together, chanting in their prayer language. When they stand up there is a sort of determination in their sweaty faces. It’s time to organize them, so he places the pair with staves beside him, at the front of the wedge, and the one with the wooden fork as the rearguard. The oldest and weakest are in the middle.

  They’re nearly ready when a younger priests shouts. He’s clutching one of the stone pillars, leaning out to look down over the yard. Bragi worms his way over to find that the crouchers are no longer scattered. They have assembled themselves in front of the gate in a single mass, blocking the means of escape, and the beast stands behind them as their leader, its skin now the same sandy color as the yard.

  Bragi wraps his fingers around the hilt of his sword. This is what the svinfylking is made for, to break through the enemy line. The only strange thing is that all of them are turned the wrong way—they are facing the gate.

  “Tell everyone to yell as we go,” he says to Symond. “It makes it better somehow.”

  He draws his blade and takes his place at the front of the wedge. Together they will be a charging boar, and he will be the tusks.

  They stopper up against the door of the bell tower, then spill out all at once. The priests are hollering in Anglish; Bragi doesn’t understand the words but he likes their enthusiasm. He leads them through the temple, past the silver-smeared carving of their god, and down the arched hall. A croucher he cut down earlier reaches feebly as they pass; he spares it a kick.

  Out into the moonlit yard. The dirt has dark spots from spilled blood. Their enemies are still facing the gate. The Litton-beast is the first to notice their approach. It turns around, and then the crouchers do the same, moving like stiff puppets. They sleepwalk forward. Bragi smells the priest beside him, his sharp sour sweat. He pats his face with his free hand.

  “Don’t be scared, or I’ll kill you,” he mutters.

  The priest nods, uncomprehending, and raises his stave. Bragi raises his arm and they all surge forward as one. He meets the first croucher mid-stride, lopping through its leg and striking bone. He flips it over as it falls and drives his sword into the back of its thigh. Beside him the terrified priest batters another croucher over the head; it flails backward, and Bragi takes the opening to lift its robe and slash up the bends of its knees.

  Arms grip his waist. He drives his elbow into soft neck and dumps the croucher to the ground. He stabs straight down, into its spine. His chest swells with a scream. The priests were not fighters in life and they are not fighters in death, and he feels almost berserker, invincible. But now he sees his true foe is in motion, stalking across the yard with its blue light bobbing like a lantern.

  Bragi takes two tries to yank his blade free; the croucher’s body sucks at it like thick mud. Around him the priests have broken shape, either chasing too far out or panicking and moving backward. One runs for the gate, and the beast stretches a knife-limb to catch him. He’s impaled and flicked off the end in two quick motions. The flung priest lands in front of Bragi with his belly peeled open, quivering organs exposed. Bragi’s own guts lurch.

  The beast lifts its knife-limbs into the air over its bent back and grates them slowly against each other. Maybe to sharpen them, maybe to give another unspoken order to the crouchers, maybe just to intimidate him with the spine-tickling screech.

  Nobody will get to the gate until the beast is gone, so Bragi darts away from the svinfylking, causing a cry of alarm. He casts a glance back to find Symond and Siv. The young priest is clutching her too tightly and might strangle her, but hopefully he understands what is happening and will keep the others together. Bragi grabs his eating knife from his belt and scrapes it along his sword edge.

  The beast twitches at the noise. Bragi does it again, moving sideways, pausing to untangle himself from a croucher and chop its arm off. The beast mirrors him, moving away from the gate. Its kni
fe-limbs are poised over its hideous head.

  “Come to me,” he says, watching its languid steps. “You fucking...” His word-well is dry; his namesake would be ashamed. “Thing.”

  The beast hunches low and then springs, closing the gap in an eye blink, leading with its black blades. For a moment Bragi wishes for his shield, then has no more time to think. He ducks under the first slash and deflects the next; the impact sings up his arm to his wrenched shoulder. He screams through his teeth and swings an arc. The beast turns his blow aside, returns it. Bragi throws up his eating knife to parry, and its blade snaps apart a finger-length from his face.

  He drops it, drops away from the beast’s darting limbs, and uses both hands to drive his sword into a bony leg. Silver sprays out, bright in the moonlight. The beast lurches. A ripple goes through its body; for a moment its dark skin flashes poisonous yellow. A knife-limb flashes towards him. Bragi heaves his blade free and swings to meet it with all his force.

  The steel slips off the black blade and bites deep into the beast’s joint, nearly severing it. Bragi gives a ragged cry. He launches upright, and now he’s the one taking ground, jabbing and cutting as the beast scuttles backward with one knife-limb hanging limp. Its taloned hands keep reaching up to touch the wound. Its pebbly skin keeps flashing yellow.

  When it turns and runs, Bragi follows.

  Even hobbled, the beast moves quickly, dragging itself along on one leg and two lanky arms. Bragi jogs after it, sucking back the cold night air, triumph swelling in his chest. It’s the raiding thrill and the hunting thrill put together. Skin, muscle, bone: his whole body is hungry for the kill. The beast leaves a spattered silver trail as it limps through the archway, onto the range.