In the darkness of a prison wagon beyond the sprawl of New York City, Captain Francis Edmund Swift still prayed for death. Dried blood covered his beard. Piss stained his trousers. The glowing collar around his neck dug into his skin. He’d placed it around many necks before, yet never imagined one’s rust would someday flake onto his own shoulders. He flicked his fingers and stared at his palm hoping for a hint of light, a spark of fire, a splash of rain. He whispered basic cants, cursing between words as his collar simply flared its brighter green. Many times he thrust his hand forward, palm aimed at the steel wagon doors, yet no shockwave was produced.
And what would he do if he even could conjure laḥaš? Blow the doors open, sure, but what then? Kindly convince the driver to put a bullet in his head? Please sir, just place the barrel on my temple! Yes, right there. Cock it now! Good! Say again? Oh, yes, I’m ready. Look at my fragile hands—you see? No shakes. Not a tremor. What’s that? Oh, no, I do not need my last rites read. I’m damned, you see. Now please just pull the trigger and send me on that great descent!
He’d never agree. No man would. But if he had the chance, perhaps he could rile the driver into a fit of rage by taunting him, calling him names, slapping him and belittling his mother? Maybe he’d accept a challenge to a duel? It was the gentlemanly thing to do, of course, to agree. But at the shooter’s mark, Francis would simply toss his pistol to the Earth and run at his opponent’s rushing bullet like a sun-kissed man racing to a desert oasis, diving into the lead ball’s path headfirst and full of smiles. Or better yet, if he could get these damnedable doors open he might flee into the woods and await a passing carriage, leaping with joy into its rumbling path so as to be trampled gruesomely and well.
So, with grunts of frustration he thrust his palm before him once more, then again, then a final time before he dropped his hand and sighed. He would have to wait to die, at least for now.
The wagon lurched as a wheel struck a rock, tossing Francis sideways into the lice-riddled hay bed. He’d been sitting in this rolling tomb for most of the day, lurching and sliding along endless turns and dips. Through the little barred window behind the carriage driver, Francis watched as trees outnumbered city homes. Farmhouses bloomed on distant hilltops. Forests loomed on scattered cliffs. Occasionally a river, the Hudson, he assumed, glinted to his left, which meant they traveled northward.
He slid forward once again as the prison wagon hobbled up steep hills, however this time the familiar muffled rumble of dirt beneath the wheels became a racing heartbeat of cobblestones. He hoisted himself up to his little window. To his left were tall stone walls like that of any castle. To his right was a steep drop down into the woods and even further, the wide expanse of a river. Ships lined the water, all carrying atop their mast that familiar Union Jack. As their ascent continued, it became difficult for Francis to stay upright and not slide down to the wagon’s doors, so he gripped the little window’s bars and pulled against gravity. They wound around several tight turns, passing cautious redcoats glaring at this racing doom carriage. Though gray stone walls still loomed to his left, he squinted against the setting sunlight to his right once more and noticed cannonades lining the river’s clifftops. He was in a fortress, he figured, and the only stone fort he knew to be a day’s ride from New York City was Fortress West Point—built by the Patriots and claimed by the Crown. It’d been years since he’d stepped inside its dismal embrace. He had hoped he’d never return.
The cobbled incline leveled as they rounded a final turn. Francis released his grip of the iron bars and locked his gaze on that terrible castekeep which towered over the winding complex of stone walls and cannonades. Four spires, thick at their base and thin at their roofs, cast shadows over the surrounding battlement lined with soldiers draped in red. The wagon approached a tunnel. Francis held his breath as they were cloaked in darkness with carriage wheels echoing loudly amidst the black. Coming fast was the blooming white of the tunnel’s mouth. He stared at the light and suddenly felt his eyes grow wet. He didn’t want to pierce that bright. He wanted to go back. He wanted all of this to go away, the collar, the murders, miserable evil inside him. He wanted to stay in this tunnel. Let it park. Let it sit for all eternity so that no more harm could come to him or anyone. Stop the wagon! He tried to yell, stop this terrible ride and let me out! I’ll have no more! But not even a whisper came out. The wheels kept turning. He shut his eyes.
The amber glow of the setting sun spilled over his eyelids. He opened them and found himself at the mouth of a sprawling, mud-drenched, smoke-filled bailey. Along the rims of the surrounding curtain walls were a mix of cages and dilapidated dormitories. Hundreds of shirtless, pale men with swollen bellies and protruding ribs clutched at cage bars, watching the approaching carriage with sunken eyes. Several scattered pyres burned the recent dead, with piles of bodies draped over one another, patiently awaiting their final release with arms and hands outstretched. The stench alone brought gags to Francis, a combination of burning flesh, rot, and fear. He choked and coughed. His eyes watered once again, blurring the approaching keep that above the carnage rose. A series of pearl white columns, dirtied with soot and bloody handprints, lead to the keep’s massive iron doors. Yet before they could reach the castle entrance, a dozen redcoats stood in their path. Finally, the carriage wheels slowed and, with a lurch, halted.
The sudden quiet was deafening. Soft wails echoed across the mud. Crackling fire and the sizzling of burning flesh gave a steady drone where wind should have been, blocked by the surrounding walls.
“Stay put,” the wagon driver said through Francis’s little window. The heavy vehicle creaked and shook as the large man left his perch, climbing down into pebbled mud.
A dozen soldier’s boots approached. Men nervously laughed. Rifles rattled. Francis crept toward the wagon’s doors and pressed his hairy ear against the iron. As the guards made their way around.
“Not guilty!?” A voice explained.
“That’s what I heard,” another replied.
“Fucking hell.”
“Ready muskets,” called a grizzly, foreboding man, a voice exhausted from years of war. Rising rifles echoed metallic clinks. “I’m unlocking the doors,” this same voice continued. “The prisoner will lie prone against the wagon floor, belly down. He will remain in this manner until properly restrained.”
“He’s not restrained?” someone whispered.
“He’s got a collar on,” another replied.
“Is that enough?”
No one replied.
The grave man continued, “The prisoner will repeat these directions for compliance.”
Francis remained quiet.
The voice groaned. A moment passed. He reiterated with a sterner tone, “The prisoner will be in compliance.”
Silence.
“What if he’s dead?” A nervous whisper asked.
“You ever seen a dead demon?” someone replied.
“Keep your muskets raised,” the war-weary voice replied.
Suddenly, an idea struck Francis that filled him with a hot rush of joy: these men could kill him. They’re twitchy. They’re unsure. Their muskets are loaded and their veins are ripe with fear. Certainly one of these men would surely love to see The Butcher dead. He just had to provoke them. Make them fear enough to pull their triggers.
Francis quickly rose as keys jingled outside. He crept backward, tensing his legs as the metal doors clinked. He rubbed his liver-spotted hands together, then balled them into fists. A hollow click. A clank. The iron doors yawned open. Amber evening light flooded the dank wagon as Francis bolted forward. Blinded by the simple grandeur of a duskward sun, yet still in a frantic sprint, the floor quickly disappeared beneath his calloused feet. Francis tumbled ass-over-heel out of the wagon. His head hit the mud road first. His spine bent. His right shoulder cracked. He cried out as the collar around his neck dug hard into his skin, drawing blood. The soldiers, a blur of red to the old man, shouted, cursed and quickly shuffled backward in the muck. Francis clamored to his feet and turned wildly. The soldiers backed away further, screaming if they could shoot, that he’s like an animal, that he should be put down. Perfect.
He squinted against the mud dripping down his face and found a man inches from him. He ducked behind the shadowed blob, leapt up, wrapped the crook of his left arm around the man’s neck and with a twist of his seething shoulder snatched the soldier’s pistol from his gunbelt. Francis shoved the weapon’s cold barrel into the man’s underjaw. His captive dropped his musket and raised his hands in surrender as the old man turned him around to face his comrades. Francis cocked the gun and positioned himself so that his head and chest were more easily accessible for bullets.
“Shoot him!” the captive cried. “Shoot him!”
“I’ll kill him!” Francis snarled. He growled and shook his head, trying to appear as rabid and crazed as a bear. He tilted his head to the soldier and spoke loudly so all could hear. “Do you have kids, boy?”
“No sir!” the soldier replied.
“A wife?”
“No sir!”
“Well parents will miss you when you’re dead!”
“I was raised an orphan!”
Francis stared at the back of the man’s neck. “Well do you have friends!?”
The soldier considered the question. He glanced at the other soldiers, to the ground.
“A dog?” Francis asked, his patience strained.
The tired, old squad leader with the miserable voice stepped forward, his back to the row of nervous riflemen with muskets raised. After a heavy sigh he groveled, “The prisoner will release the sheep-chugger.”
“I didn’t fuck the sheep!” the captive cried.
Numerous riflemen groaned. Some said, oh come off it. Others said, fuck off. One man near the end of the row shouted, we all bloody heard you in the barn.
“I swear!” the accused soldier shouted.
“Fuck it,” Francis mumbled. He quickly shifted the pistol’s barrel from the man’s temple down to his red cotton thigh. Maybe if he just shot him, he thought, they’d all open fire. He pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked. Nothing happened.
The soldiers descended on him like a wave. Francis tumbled backward, crashing to the ground. His captive fell on top of him and a gush of air spilled from Francis’ belly. A musket’s shoulder stock cracked his forehead. A boot struck his ribs. The man in his grip squirmed and crawled away as more boots and rifle butts rained over Francis now curled into a muddy ball.
Suddenly, a voice called out, echoing across the bailey.
“Gentlemen!” A man shouted in the distance. Everyone stopped.
From beside the carriage, belly-deep in mud, Francis fixed his blurry gaze toward the castle’s enormous doors where a pale man garbed in crimson now stood.
“I would prefer my guests weren’t invalids before I dined them,” the man called out. After a moment, he turned and disappeared as the doors shut with a heavy thud.
The soldiers quickly backed away from Francis, panting and wiping splattered mud from their faces. The grizzly commander turned to Francis’ captive and looked him up and down. “You alright?” he said, his voice like smelted iron.
The young soldier wiped muck from his red coat. “I didn’t shag the sheep,” he replied.
The commander shook his head, then returned his attention to Francis lying at his feet. “Get him up.”
Through squishes and shlops, soldiers wrenched the quivering old man from the mud. Two men firmly gripped his biceps. The squad leader slopped ahead of Francis and turned to him.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
Francis spat blood at his feet.
“Come on,” the commander said with his signature sigh.
Together, the baker’s dozen shuffled across wet pebbles toward the hulking crimson doors. Francis squinted around him at the surrounding fortress, his left eye quickly swelling shut. The sun was near its sleep, which gave the bailey a ghostly amber glow. On both sides of the walled yard, starved men in enormous cages watched the old man and his escorts. They said nothing, only stared. He passed the raging pyre as the last of the bodies were hurled into its flames. Within the fire arms and legs twitched and curled inward at the heat. He noticed amongst the dead several large snouts as well with fur ablaze and jaws agape. Amidst the surrounding embers, their sharp teeth glinted.
The butt of a musket struck Francis’ spine, sending a fresh jolt of pain through his already seething body.
“Eyes forward,” a soldier grunted behind Francis.
As they neared the castle entrance, the pebbled path turned to stone. Lining either side of the stones were tall, white four-sided columns etched with glyphs and runes. The grooves of the symbols were caked with soot and mud. Bloody handprints encircled each pillar’s base. Perched atop the pilasters were gawking crows. As he passed beneath them, Francis met their gaze and watched their leathery heads slowly turn as the group marched by. Finally, at the end of the causeway were the two enormous, crimson doors.
The commander stepped forward as the other soldiers shuffled back a step. The leader lifted a circular iron knocker and slammed it against the metal, once, twice, a third time with deep, teeth rattling gongs. The commander released his grip. A moment passed. Then, with a delicate creak a smaller, normal-sized door opened where no seam had previously been. At first there was only darkness in the doorway. Then a hulking figure, crouched so as to fit through the door, emerged. After clearing the threshold he straightened himself, towering several feet above the men. His skin seemed to be sewn onto his face in several, discolored sections. His jaw was perfectly chiseled, his hair, black and silky, tied into a knot. His garb resembled something like a lavish Spanish bullfighter. A ruffled, white blouse danced in the slight breeze. With pale, piercing eyes he met the gaze of the soldiers before him. Everyone aside from Francis and the commander shuffled back another step.
The iron-throated squad leader removed his weathered tricorn, pressing it to his breast.
“The prisoner,” he simply said.
The tall, thin, angular man eyed Francis. He glanced at his broken nose, his bloody beard, his mud-drenched prison clothes When he finally spoke, his voice was like liquid gold softly pouring into eardrums. “He looks like shit.”
The commander nodded, but didn’t make eye contact.
The giant surveyed the soldiers behind Francis. They shuffled back even more at the spotlight of his gaze. Finally, he returned his stormshroud eyes to the squad leader.
He asked, “Was the riot quelled?”
“It was,” the commander replied. “But we lost some men.”
“How many?”
“I’m unsure, but several. Good men, at that.”
“Bring their bodies here.”
A gentle wind swept through the columned atrium. Behind them, the pyre’s blaze hissed.
The commander replied, “… Sir?”
“Both the rebels and the loyalists. Salt the wagons before loading the carcasses and bring them here by morning.”
“By morning?” the commander said, finally meeting the hulking man’s gaze. He cleared his throat, attempting a gentler tone. “Might we keep our own and bury them? With proper rights and reads? Many have families.”
The puzzle-faced man clenched his perfect jaw. He glanced at the bailey’s many cages. “The peasant’s bodies will do,” he said, his chin now lifting upward as he observed the purpling sky. “Return here by dawn with the cargo.” He met the commander’s eyes and smiled, the skin of his discolored, patched cheeks crinkling and folding. “You may leave now.”
“Sir,” the soldier commander replied.
He returned his hat to his head, then heel-turned and faced the soldiers. Without a glance at Francis, or a word to his men, the tired man walked back through the causeway. After a moment of quiet confusion amongst the redcoats, they also turned to follow their leader as quickly as they could, leaving Francis alone with the tall, thin man who quickly dropped his grin.
“You will freshen up before dinner,” the giant said. He turned and drooped gracefully back through the doorway, disappearing into black. Francis followed and the door shut behind him.
The entry hall was just as he remembered. The floor was a polished onyx. The ceiling, covered in imagery depicting battles from the current war, towered as high as clouds. The depth of the hall was profoundly cathedral-esque and lit only by the moon-blue glow of glyphs etched into pillars which lead to a distant throne. He had heard a rumor that General Washington was buried here, but not even the most famous rebel deserved to be entombed within such lifeless dark.
“I’ll take you to your room,” the tall man said in a soft, hushed tone as if concerned to disturb the eerie quiet.
The clink of his steel boots echoed as they walked. The floor was cold against Francis’ bare feet and when he peered down at the floor he saw the fuzzy outline of his miserable reflection. The open breezeway between the hall’s pillars and towering stone walls was lined with thick wood doors. They passed several before the tall man paused, delicately lifted a latch, then drooped through the doorway, closing it behind Francis once he followed.
Clinking more down a long, seldomly torchlit hallway, Francis wondered what was behind each door they passed. He’d never been beyond the inner sanctum, and he couldn’t fathom why anyone would possibly need so many rooms. Finally, the tall man paused again and lifted a latch on another thick wooden door. It yawned open and inside was a steaming tub beside a dresser with two piles of clothes neatly folded on top. In the back other room, centered against a stone wall, was a plush bed draped in colorful silk. A circular rug depicted knights battling a dragon, suspended in time as the beast spewed fire.
“We’ve prepared a bath,” the patchworked man said. “The stones beneath it are heated dragon eggs. They’re perfectly safe and should stay warm for the coming hour. There are fresh clothes on the dresser beside the tub, and you will find scissors and a razor atop them. Do you shave with cream?”
Francis, still staring into the room, shook his head. “Uh, no.”
The tall man continued, “Well, regardless, you’ll find Vesuvian Hydra Oil tucked in the upper left drawer, just below the trousers, of which you have your pick.” He turned to Francis. “Clean and clothe yourself. Shave your beard and cut your hair. I have invoked a rehabilitation aura within the room. You’ll find your wounds will heal within the hour. When you’re ready, I will take you to the dining hall where you will join Sir William in the dining chamber.”
Francis stepped into the room, then turned back to the doorway.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, his voice hoarse and harsh.
“Fish,” the man said, then he pulled the door shut and locked it.
The sudden silence was unnerving. There were no windows, no paintings, only two adorning torch flames which settled into a steady glow having just been disturbed by the breeze of the closing door. He turned to a full sized mirror framed in an ornately patterned gold. Already he noticed the scrapes and cut across his face slowly closing and disappearing, yet he still looked like shit with mangey, soiled prison garb and a matted beard. He gripped his drooping right shoulder and grit his teeth. With a shove backward and up, a pop echoed through the room and his bones realigned. After a fit of cursing and panting, he stepped closer to the mirror. The swelling around his left eye was receding. The blood had already dried on his forehead, the gash now clotted. He pressed his fingers to his nose gingerly and felt the broken bone of his bridge clicking into its rightful place. Cold stone air sucked more easily into his nostrils. He sighed, observing now his liver spots, his decaying teeth, his receding scalp—all of which remained the same, immune to rehabilitation. When had he become so old, he thought? He was strong once, handsome, rugged. Now he just looked like his father.
“I’ve been instructed to watch you,” the mirror suddenly chirped, causing Francis to jump backward. “Sorry, I did not mean to cause alarm.”
Francis sighed again and slacked his shoulders.
“Spying glass,” Francis said.
“You’re far less frail than they said you’d be,” the mirror said.
“You’re a gossip, then?”
“Just remarking.”
Francis gruffed. He gingerly slid his sticky prison shirt from his chest, revealing a graveyard of scars across his pale skin.
“Are those from werewolf claws?” The mirror asked.
Francis reached behind his upper back and felt the grooves of gashes long entrenched.
“Several,” he replied, then dropped his trousers.
The bath was scalding at first, then nothing short of heaven. He sat for a while with the water just up to his neck, letting the steam hug his weathered cheeks. He submerged himself fully and opened his eyes to watch the muck across his body soften and rise. He wanted to stay under this water, let his body go limp. A bubble lifted from his lips, plopped onto the surface. The mirror said something muffled, but he ignored it. So many times he’d hoped he could just rid the darkness inside him himself. Jump from a window, bash his head against a wall. But a force prevented this, some invisible hand keeping him from self-harm. Frustrated, he rose from the water and gasped.
“The aura cannot mend a troubled mind,” the mirror said.
Francis replied, “I know.”
He released the cork in the bathtub drain and watched the muck swirl for a time. Approaching the dresser, he examined the clothes he’d been given: a farmer’s blouse and earth-beige trousers. In the center of a tight-spun belt was a razor and scissors. He slid a dresser drawer open and picked up a small blue bottle.
“Vesuvian Hydra Oil,” he mumbled, then pulled the bottle’s stopper and sniffed its mouth. Recoiling and gagging, he quickly smacked the stopper back into the neck and tossed the bottle back into the drawer, closing it.
“How long have you been trapped inside this glass?” Francis asked as he delicately ran a dry razor down his cheek, spilling long gray hair onto the floor.
“I have no idea,” the mirror replied. “I can’t remember what my life was like before.”
“Few do,” Francis said. “You’re lucky that you don’t, but do you recall any feelings? Any colors?”
After many razor strokes, the mirror replied, “I remember warmth.”
Francis nodded and continued removing his beard.
Cutting his hair was like trimming a wire bird’s nest, but after a significant struggle, Francis seemed satisfied enough with the results.
“You look younger,” the mirror said.
“I don’t feel it,” Francis replied.
He slid the trousers on, then threaded the farmer’s blouse over his freshly cut hair and down over his shoulders.
“You can call upon your master now,” Francis said, retrieving a pair of shoes by the mirror.
“Certainly,” the glass replied.
In the time it took to slide on and clip his perfectly fitting latchet shoes, a chime rang throughout the hallway and within moments the door yawned open once again.
Francis stood, presenting himself to the patchworked man hunched down to see through the doorway.
“To your satisfaction?” Francis asked, waving his arms lightly in the air.
The hunched man’s creased cheeks crunched into a smile.
“Come,” he said. And Francis followed.
After several hallways and upward stairwells, all of stone and lit with the same dull torches, Francis entered a banquet hall lit by scattered candles and a single, raging hearth. A long oaken table dominated much of the room, its surface vacant aside from rows of central candelabras and one dining plate at the far head of the table. Clopping through the cavernous room, Francis eyed the stone walls adorned in colorful tapestries depicting the first Crusade. Paladin Knights, with swords drawn, slew vampires and werewolves. Trolls heckled pious pilgrims. The Pope, seated atop his golden throne, held over his head the first sword of the Holy Paladin Order, bestowing it to Alexios I Komnenos, King of Byzantium and the first Holy Commander of the Paladin Order. The depictions were glorified, colorful and saw these warriors as banishers of darkness. Yet Francis knew these first Crusades were much bloodier, much uglier. And nothing since has ever changed in the fight against the night.
The patchworked man slid a chair from the end of the table, gesturing for Francis to sit. With a groan, the old man descended on the hard wood as the tall man slid the chair forward again, pressing Francis against the table.
“Wine?” the man said, reaching over the table and lifting a crimson bottle.
“Perhaps later,” Francis replied.
The tall man smiled. “Of course.”
“Will his Lordship be arriving soon?” Francis asked.
“After he’s attended to certain matters,” the man replied. “It shouldn’t be long.” He then turned and retired down the dining hall, his steel boots clunking clopping far into the abyss of distant stone.
Francis peered around the quiet chamber and rested his gaze on the crackling hearth. It was a brilliant thing, big and bright with perfect dancing flames which cast similarly dancing shadows all across the walls. Atop the hearth was a mantel adorned with a scroll in a glass case, a silver pistol, a brass ship’s compass clamped into a binnacle, but in the middle of this shelf was a skull with bifocals over its eyesockets, the armbands clamped into the bone on either side of the polished white. Francis stared at the thing and noticed it was facing him perfectly, staring back. The spectacles glittered in the flickering light.
“The legend himself,” a booming voice burst through the room, startling Francis. Behind him a man chuckled. “And quick to scare, no doubt!”
Francis turned and found another tall man with pale white skin and a charming young jaw standing in the doorway of a shadowy stairwell. Over his right shoulder rested the golden strings of a golden bow. Slung around his crimson jacket was a leather strap which wrapped down around his chest, then up over his left shoulder where it disappeared into a golden quiver filled with golden arrows with golden fletching. His trousers were tight and crimson, his stockings perfectly satin white. He looked as if he were ready for a gala, and suddenly Francis felt terribly underdressed.
“I am William, as I’m sure you know. Mayor, they call me.”
“Sir, was it you—”
“Who rigged the jury and had you whisked to my estate devoid of pretense or conjecture?”
Francis stared at the man, then nodded.
William studied the old man for a moment, then said, “You clean up nicely. I’d hardly recognize The Butcher.” Francis’s grip tightened on the nape of the dining chair. “Let me show you something,” the man said. He turned and ascended the steps, disappearing into shadows.
Francis sighed and approached the doorway with a hobble, but before leaving the dining chamber he turned once more to the bespectacled skull still staring at him from the mantel. He shook his head, began his ascent up the steep, narrow spiral.
His hands slid along the curved stone walls as his shoes tapped on each new step. A breeze began to whisper around him. He felt it in his fresh cut hair, down his fresh linen shirt. Then music grew louder, echoing around him. The man from before laughed unseen. He heard a thunk, a whoosh, a yip and a ha all in rhythm with a stringed quartet. Finally, the amber glow of a harvest moon spilled through a doorway. He stepped through onto a parapet which overlooked a large, circular courtyard littered with goblin corpses.
“It’s a perfect night for this!” William said by the ledge of the curtain wall. “Look at that thing!” He raised a wooden goblet in a toast to the enormous, rising moon, then down its contents and threw the cup far into the courtyard where it clacked against stone.
On the corner of the parapet was a stringed quartet shilling away in perfect harmonies.
“Do you know Handel?” William asked Francis who shook his head. “My father met him when I was just a bairn. Carthage was much more beautiful back then before the reign of Melqart.” William then turned to the courtyard below and yelled, “Release the next ones!”
Suddenly, two doors flung open on either side of the circular yard. A dozen stone-skinned goblins stumbled from the doors, six per portal. They turned around desperately. Some hugged one another and whimpered, others scrambled.
“Knock!” William shouted. He pulled a golden arrow from his golden quiver. Leaning over to Francis he said in a hush, “I always like to give a little warning before—not like they can even understand English, though.”
William slid the golden arrow’s fletching over the lace of the bow. He pulled the string and bolt back elegantly, lowering the weapon to the courtyard. Several goblins pointed up at the man. Others shouted, warning each other of danger with screeching and clicking in rapid succession. Some ran behind a large marble fountain, splashing through its algae-riddled water. William’s golden arrow tip shifted left, then right.
“Quick little fuckers,” he mumbled. “The last ones were fat.”
He squinted his left eye. The arrow point stopped, then in an instant released. Francis’ head followed the golden light emitted from the arrow which quickly pierced a goblin’s belly. Gray flesh burst. Green, sloppy intestines and two stomachs fell onto the white pebbles as the little thing cried out in a horribly shrill screech. It fell to the ground, screaming and writhing in pain as others around it ran. William grumbled and pulled another arrow from his quiver.
“Knock!” he shouted, frustrated.
He pulled the string back again, aimed, then released another streak of golden light, this time piercing the back of the goblin and rendering it limp and silent.
“There!” William said, exhaling. Beneath them, goblins clawed at walls in an attempt to climb the impossibly smooth stone. He squinting, eyeing one in particular
“Knock!” he shouted at which the goblins screamed louder, ran faster, clawed more frantically. He aimed his bow, held his breath, then loosed another bolt which struck a small, bare-chested goblin woman in the throat. She clutches at the bolt in her neck, trying to stop the green blood gushing from her punctured artery. Suddenly, golden light bloomed beneath her skin, illuminating her veins and spine before her neck burst in a shower of green and her head soared through the air and into the fountain pond.
Francis grimaced as William squealed with delight, his glee a harmony with the cries below. He turned to the old man and presented him with the bow.
“You must try it,” William said.
“I don’t hunt for sport,” Francis replied.
“Oh, don’t be a lollytwat,” William said with a sigh, thrusting the bow closer. Francis eyed the thing and felt William’s gaze. He gripped the bow’s handle.
“There you go,” the mayor said. “Show me what the legends say.” He crossed his arms and stared, studying his guest.
“I’ll need an arrow,” Francis said, eyeing the desperate courtyard.
William jolted as if struck. “My God, of course,” he said, pulling a golden bolt from his quiver. “You must think of me a titwit.” Francis took the arrow from the mayor’s ice cold hand.
He slid the fletching over the silky string, notching it. It was a beautiful bow, light as a feather and coursing with magics, but he could already tell it was impractically flimsy. A thing built for kings as gifts for bribes.
William leaned over to Francis. “You need to say it.”
“What?”
“… Knock.”
Francis looked down at the courtyard of frantic goblins.
“Knock,” Francis said hoarsely.
“Louder,” William said.
Francis glanced a glare at the mayor, then yelled with the whole of his diaphragm, “Knock!”
He pulled the bolt and string back as a whisper suddenly rattled through his skull.
Let their spines erupt, it said.
Let their juices flow and we shall drink them.
Francis shook hit head. He aimed his bow at a shivering goblin who stood alone in the center of the yard, too afraid to run.
Kill for me. Kill for me and let me eat. Like we did before.
Behind the goblin stood a slender, dark figure. It had no eyes. Its hands rested beside its hips with fingers splayed wide. It seemed to hunch over the goblin, leaning. And though its face was listless, Francis knew it held a smile.
He released the arrow. Light shimmered through the air brilliantly then struck the ground beside the goblin who began to weep.
“The fuck was that?” William bellowed.
“It’s been a while,” Francis said with a shrug, handing the bow over.
“Fuck off with that,” William replied. He pulled another arrow from his quiver and presented it to the old man. “We aren’t leaving until you get a kill. Come on, now. You’re the best damn nightling slayer in living memory.”
Francis slid the arrow into the string.
“And what do we say?” William said, leaning over to him.
Francis sucked in air, then yelled a frustrated, “Knock!”
The whispers returned.
That’s it, it said. Let the arrow pierce its throbbing heart.
He felt the searing eyes of William on him and he knew, after months of meditations amidst the solitude of prison, that he could control this darkness inside him. One kill was nothing. He knew now what he held, what lived in him.
Francis aimed the arrow tip at the shivering goblin again.
Yes.
He released the bolt. Light erupted around the little arrow head and pierced the goblin in its chest, instantly exploding the creature in a shower of green goo and chunks of grey flesh. William howled with joy and slapped Francis’s back. But suddenly, the old man felt his blood burn hot. His muscles tensed. The hand on his back felt like an enemy, a perversion, a thing that needed to be taken in an instant snapped to pieces. He wanted to take William’s face in his hands and drive it perfectly into the sharp corner of the parapet’s stone. God he wanted to see the dust inside this sodding vampire burst out like ashes scattering in the wind.
Just let me in, the voice said. Let me in.
But then William released his hand from Francis’ back and the old man exhaled.
“That’s the fucking spirit,” William shouted with delight. “That twat king said the strength of those who fire the bow are amplified, but Christ alive you really are what they say. There’s still a fire burning in you yet.” Francis glanced at the fresh crater where the goblin had stood. Around its dripping remains the surviving goblins cowered and wept. handed the bow back to William who took it and slung it over his shoulder again.
“Lock the remaining up!” William shouted as Francis handed him the bow. He put his hand on Francis’ shoulder, this time gingerly. “We’ve got so much to discuss.”
They stepped into the stairwell and descended to the dining hall as the rising moon cast shadows of the corpses in the yard.
