Knight of the Cross (10 page)
“Sir? What did you see? Did the blasphemers kill all our men?”
“Stop wasting time and follow my orders!” the Grand Master snapped back at Sir Richard. “All the men are dead, yes, although I don't think any human could have done...
that
to their bodies...”
He and his small retinue stumbled out onto the street, some of them retching, and Sir Richard looked over at Stephen and the rest of the men. “You heard him, get to work!”
The Hospitallers spent the rest of the morning blocking the tunnel before they set alight to the church, watching as the wooden roof collapsed upon itself. Then they moved on to the other entrance, the one Sir Richard and Jacob had first discovered and sealed that off with rubble and cement too.
When they were done the prior performed a mass for the souls of their fallen brothers, buried beneath the village for the rest of time.
The ceremony ended and Foulques de Villaret beckoned Sir Richard over to him as the sun began to sink in the sky, the relentless, hellish heat giving way to a refreshing easterly breeze.
“The devil-worshippers,” he said, “you reported that they have black eyes, am I right? Their pupils are so wide they cover almost the entire eyeball?”
The Englishman nodded, thinking back over the recent days' events. “Aye, Grand Master, all of them had that queer look about them.”
De Villaret nodded. “Good. You and the sergeant may return to the fortress; your investigation is finished.”
“Grand Master? Are you not coming with us? What about the men? What are we going to do about Dagon?”
“The men will stay with me. We have more work to do here.”
“Work? What do” –
“You've already seen enough, Sir Richard,” de Villaret broke in. “What happened in that cavern cannot be blamed on you. So I'm sparing you any further mental anguish. Return to the city. When I come back we will look at finding a new posting for you, perhaps back in your homeland.”
The English knight inclined his head, cursing inwardly, and moved towards his horse, calling for Stephen to follow him.
* * *
As the two Englishmen rode from the village Grand Master Foulques de Villaret gave orders to his knights. The Hospitallers then moved from house to house, searching them for anyone who carried the strange eyes Sir Richard had described.
Not many were found; no more than twenty or so. De Villaret surmised most of them had been cut down during the previous night's perverted underground ceremony.
“Bind them,” he told the knights. “And bring them with us.”
The villagers cried out for mercy. The black-eyed people that had been arrested were their husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children....
The thought of these families being infested by the unholy sect terrified de Villaret who had seen the fearsome power of this blasphemous religion in the cavern beneath the sand he stood on now.
This cult had to be destroyed without mercy.
“Move out!” he roared, mounting his enormous warhorse. “If any of these people try to stop you, cut them down!”
The column slowly wound its way back towards the city, leaving behind the wailing villagers whom de Villaret ordered be stopped from following them.
When they reached the field with the sinister straw man in it the Grand Master called a halt, grunting to himself as he noticed the straw effigy was no longer standing there. A chill ran down his neck, and he raised his voice, desperate for this whole thing to be done with.
“Take these people into the field and behead them,” he ordered. “Then burn the bodies.”
Sir Raymond de Balben nodded. He too had been in the cavern. “What about the children?”
“Them too.”
* * *
The ship creaked and groaned as it picked up speed and left Rhodes behind on its long journey back to England. Stephen felt sick already and even Sir Richard felt apprehensive at the unfamiliar sounds and sensations sea travel brought.
Grand Master de Villaret had, after talking to his Turcopolier Thomas L'Archer – a friend of Sir Richard's – decided to give the English knight command of the preceptory at Kirklees in Yorkshire, where he had family ties; indeed, his wife and two young sons were living with family there right now and the knight was looking forward tremendously to seeing them all again.
De Villaret also assigned Stephen to replace Jacob as the English knight's new sergeant-at-arms.
The pair stood now in the glorious sunshine, leaning on the ship's railing and gazing back across the sparkling blue waves at Rhodes as the ship rolled on the gentle waves, the ruins of the Colossus still dominating the scene even though most of the great monument had been destroyed by an earthquake generations ago.
“You glad to be leaving the island?” Stephen asked, more to take his mind off the nausea he felt at the rocking motion of the ship than from any desire to make small-talk.
Sir Richard nodded firmly. “Aye, I am. I'd have liked to carry on the investigation but the Grand Master wants to erase the whole thing from history. He's ordered the entire population of Krymmeni Thesi to be dispersed around other settlements so he can wipe the place from the face of the Earth. I'm happy to leave Rhodes for now and go back to my family – you heard what that villager from Kailithies reported this morning.”
As they'd made ready to depart from the fortress earlier that day a man had arrived from Kailithies, a small village not far from Krymmeni Thesi, to seek an audience with the Grand Master. He claimed strange sounds had recently been heard from beneath the countryside surrounding the village – loud thumps and unintelligible, blasphemous voices chanting.
Sir Richard, hearing the news from another knight, had suggested to de Villaret that he hire the merchant, Leontios, to inscribe more of the flat stones with the mysterious symbols on them and secrete them all over the island in the hope they'd offer some protection against Dagon. The Grand Master hadn't been enthusiastic about the idea of employing an Orthodox Greek to plant heathen symbology on his island but in light of the worrying news from Kailithies had relented.
After Sir Richard had located the Greek merchant and enlisted his aid for the Order – with a further payment of silver coins for his previous help – they'd bade each other a respectful farewell and the knight led his new sergeant to the docks where their ship back to the north of England awaited them.
They stood on the deck in silence for a time now, drinking in the sight of the slowly receding island in the sun, the occasional spot of greenery standing out beautifully against the sandstone of the port and the clear blue of the ocean, lost in their memories of what had happened in Krymmeni Thesi.
“What d'you think happened to that...devil you saw?” Stephen wondered. “Did our mercenaries stop it before it could take physical form? Did they kill it?”
The Hospitaller knight had asked himself the same question repeatedly but would never be sure. “Who knows?” he replied. “Dagon, or whatever that thing was, wasn't alive to begin with; it was just smoke drifting in the air. You can't kill something that's already dead. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination. No one else saw it, did they?” He crossed himself with a shake of his head and reached inside his surcoat to grip the flat stone with the elder sign inscribed on it that Leontios had given him.
Rhodes was left further and further behind as the wind filled their sails and the horrors they'd witnessed there seemed to diminish into the horizon along with the island itself.
“Aye, I'll be glad to get a fresh start back in England,” Sir Richard said with a small smile, beginning to relax for the first time in what seemed like weeks. “It'll be an easy life for us I'm sure. England's mostly at peace and Kirklees is a comfortable estate. We won't need to worry too much about ancient demons there. The only thing we'll need to be wary of are the outlaws – I hear Barnsdale's full of them...”
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Readers of my two full-length novels,
Wolf's Head
and
The Wolf and the Raven
will know some of Sir Richard and Stephen's story already, but ever since I was writing
Raven
I thought they were such good characters that it'd be interesting to look into their background in a little more depth, hence this novella which is, I suppose, something of a prequel to
Wolf's Head
.
I've tried to write my previous novels from a “realistic” standpoint, so for this work I decided it'd be fun to introduce some minor fantasy or supernatural elements. Dagon comes from an HP Lovecraft story (and is also an ancient Sumerian god) although the “Arra! Dagon!” chant comes from a song by the brilliant death metal band Nile (thank you Karl, Dallas and George!) and my description of him here is based on the recent internet invention Slenderman. The black-eyed people are also taken from modern, internet folklore – search for “black-eyed kids” for some spooky stories...!
I would have liked to include some of the folklore indigenous to Rhodes but was unable to find anything other than cats and sleep-paralysis. The latter is something I suffer from periodically and trust me, it really is as terrifying as I've depicted it here the first few times it happens. Even now, after years of dealing with it, I find it frightening when it happens. I've never seen Dagon but I did see an archetypal 'grey' alien walk into my bedroom and stand beside my bed staring at me when I was about 20. It was a genuinely frightening experience although I didn't wake up with a sore arse so I'm hoping I wasn't
really
abducted into a UFO...
Grand Master Foulques de Villaret was a real person, and he was a rather arrogant individual – a group of his own Hospitaller Knights attempted to assassinate him in 1317 because of his tyrannical behaviour, so I tried to bring some of that out in the story.
I really hope you enjoyed
Knight of the Cross
, whether you're a new reader or someone who's read my previous work. If you did, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads and wherever else you like to talk about books, it really does help a self-published author like myself – I don't have an agent to tell people about my work, so I'm reliant on my readers and I greatly appreciate the feedback.
My next novel will be the third in The Forest Lord series and takes up where
The Wolf and the Raven
left off, so keep an eye out for it. The working title is
Rise of the Wolf
and it should be out around the end of 2014/ early 2015.
In the meantime, I'm working on an audio version of
Knight of the Cross
with Nick Ellsworth who brilliantly read the
Wolf's Head
audiobook so look out for that (it should be cheap, as it's a lot shorter than a full-length novel, so if you ever wanted to try an audiobook, now's the time...).
Thanks to Robin Carter for his insightful editing suggestions, to Romina Nicolaides for her invaluable insights into Greek culture, and thank YOU for buying
Knight of the Cross
!
Steven A. McKay,
Old Kilpatrick,
August 8
th
, 2014
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