The Fallen (21 page)

“Where are you going?” asked Abelli.

“Anywhere but here,” said Pablo, hating the sound of his whining voice. But he felt the urge to get out of the camp and walk a little way down the mountainside, away from the panicked cries and the moans of the injured.

“Go with him,” said Abelli, waving to Lazzari.

Pablo found a vague path, worn he supposed by mountain goats, and followed it for several minutes, going nowhere in particular. He was aware that Private Lazzari was following and felt a desire to turn and tell him that he wanted to be left alone. He stopped and Lazzari did too, a little way off. Pablo looked up into the cold night sky.

“What are you doing away from the camp?” came a voice Pablo recognised. He still jumped to hear it, before turning to look at one of the Priests.

“I just felt I needed some fresh air. Away from the camp.”

“You have taken it,” replied the Priest impassively. “Now go back to your fellow soldiers, Pablo Gilda. Private Lazzari will accompany you.” Pablo started to object, but the Priest raised a hand to his shoulder and instantly he fell mute. It had always been the way things were done while he was growing up in the Church, any defiance beaten out of him, always subservient to their wishes. The touch of the Priest was cold, as it always was, and with it Pablo could detect the faint smell of sulphur that always hung about the Priests, wherever they went.

THIRTY FIVE

P
LEZEN
. B
ULGARIA
.

“What is this terrible place you've brought us to, Poré?” growled the outlaw beside the gaunt figure of the Cardinal as they looked up at the desolate ridge. “The sun is high above the horizon and yet it feels cold as winter, as if something happened here, something dreadful.”

“Something dreadful did happen here,” replied Poré, his cool eyes surveying the lands to the south. He drew his hands into the sleeves of his robe for warmth. “Many decades ago, a battle took place here. The siege of Pleven. Between the Russians and the Turks. Twenty-five thousand killed on this very ridge. They say the land ran with rivers of blood.”

“Sounds like too many?” grunted the man, scratching at his hairy face.

“Or too few.”

“What are we supposed to be looking for?” another of Poré's clan called across the gap between hillocks.

“I don't know,” Poré called back, doubt consuming his thoughts. Over the raised summit figures paced the grassy plain, their heads studying the ground. “I am hoping I will know when I see it.” Limping heavily on his wounded leg, he walked awkwardly up the embankment for a better vantage point, climbing to where a line of stunted trees grew alongside another shallow ridge.

“You are not giving us much to go on, Poré!” the haggard man said, following after him, scouring the ground for he knew not what. He stopped and kicked over a rotting branch before walking on.

“I will know it when I see it!” Poré repeated, tired of the questions. It was all he had heard from them since they left Paris. Questions. Many times he had wondered if they were a fair exchange for the brutality and the lust for violence they brought with them.

French soldiers of the Boxer Rebellion in China, they had been sent to fight and die for the defence of the Catholic faith in Beijing. They had done what had been expected of them by their masters in that campaign, only to return to France and be ignored by those they had gone to defend. Homeless and destitute when Poré had found them on a Paris street close to Notre Dame, cast out by those they had served, the six of them had flocked to Poré's banner and the promise of striking back at the faith which had disowned them.

Attracted by his grim charisma and the promise of retribution and riches, they had followed the man across much of Europe, able to take whatever they wanted courtesy of pelts worn on their heads, divided into seven from a single large pelt Poré had produced, the largest of which Poré had kept for himself. Whatever witchcraft was bound up within the stinking pieces of fur, it gave the old soldiers powers unrivalled by any they came up against and bestowed on them a savagery and bloodlust that tantalised and entrapped them like a powerful narcotic.

Wearing the pelts, nothing could stand in their way, no prize was beyond their reach. And they fought for Poré, for when they donned the pelts they were filled with an unquenchable rage and wished only to kill and gorge themselves on their victims.

“You say you will know when you see it,” muttered the man walking behind Poré in tired reply, “but what about the rest of us?” He put his filthy hands on his hips and turned a circle on the spot where he stood. “I see no rich pickings here. I see no Catholic churches to tear down, no Catholics to kill!”

Poré walked on, his eyes sweeping the ground like someone who had lost a treasured keepsake among the grass and stones. Suddenly he stopped, his eyes riveted to a spot just ahead of him. His heart beat faster in his chest as he slipped forward and sank, with some difficulty, to his knees. The earth here was burnt but the ground was quite cold and the ashes hard, as if many years had passed since they had been alight. The sharp musk of sulphur hung in the air.

“What is it?” asked the haggard soldier, walking up. “What have you found?”

Another had joined them, attracted by Poré's close scouring of the ground.

“What is it? A fire?”

“Yes, but not a recent one. And no fire with which you will be familiar.” Excitedly Poré placed his hand into the centre of the scorched ground and closed his eyes, as if feeling for a presence.

“What is that smell?” asked a third man, stepping up and wrinkling his nose, his long arms hanging beside his heavy thighs.

“Sulphur,” replied Poré. And he knew then that he had found what he had been looking for. He dug hard into the baked burnt earth and lifted some of the solid ashes from the ground. They seemed like metal, as if the heat had been so intense that it had melted the rocks. He weighed the tarnished metal in his hand as if trying to divine arcane secrets from its mottled shape.

“This is it?” asked the haggard man, disappointed. “This is what we've been looking for? A cold fire?”

But Poré ignored him, staring out across the vista, trying to imagine the scene thirty-eight years ago, the carnage and ruin of the battlefield, the energy and violence of the ceremony.

“Poré!” another man called. “You're a fool! You've brought us all this way to look at an old camp?”

“I had to come,” replied Poré, more to himself than to the brigands gathering around him, lost within his own maelstrom of thoughts.

He looked up, studying the greying heavens. Their shadows were growing long over the field, and Poré could feel that a remnant of the past still lay heavy over the hillside on which they perched, a cold and bitter blight no number of years of summer sun could erase. They had tried to raise something here, to bring something through from the Abyss.

All but one of the men in Poré's band began to turn and walk away.

“You owe it to the men to explain to them why you've brought us here, Poré,” he said, and at once Poré leapt to his feet and stood a hair's breadth from the man, smelling his wretched breath.

“I need to explain nothing to you! Nor to anyone!” he hissed, rage bristling through him. He turned back to the cold fire and dug the toe of his boot through the ashes. “This is not the end. This is only the beginning. If the men are not willing to follow me, then let them go. I need strong men at my back, not those who lack conviction.”

“They don't lack conviction, they just need to know where we are going.”

“That I don't know,” replied the old Priest, and he hung his head as if suddenly defeated. “I don't know.” He dropped the ashes to the earth and brushed his hands clean. “But I must find out. I must do as I was bid. As I was commanded. Everything depends on it. Everything.”

THIRTY SIX

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

The three small figures were almost hidden in the shadows of the church of St Stephen of the Abyssinians. The Cardinals stood in utter silence, their hands clutched firm about them, their faces drawn, trying to comprehend the desecration of the ancient fresco before them.

“The prophecy,” croaked Cardinal Korek, his eyes never once leaving the bloodstained wall. “Are we to now accept that this sign proves that it is coming to pass?”

Cardinal Secretary of State Casado shook his head urgently. “This is just one event,” he said, trying to sound more assured than his private thoughts suggested. “We cannot declare that
he
is returned because of this one incident.”

“But with all the other signs?” countered Cardinal Bishop Adansoni. “The possessions? The birth deformities? The failed crops? The Eagle Fountain running red with blood? They come together to suggest this cannot be just a chance occurrence.”

“There have been other such occurrences in the past, of statues which have bled, of frescos which have been defaced. None of them have suggested that –”

“Speak not his name,” muttered Adansoni quickly. “Not in this holy place.”

“I would not dare to defile this chapel of God by doing so, Cardinal Bishop Adansoni,” said Casado. “Nor would I say this vandalism proves anything. Look,” he exclaimed, going forward and raising his hand to the wall. He hesitated for a moment, as if summoning the will to continue, before placing his hand against the stonework and smearing the blood. “Look how the so called ‘blood' wipes clean. If this were an act of his, then surely …” But his words faltered as the blood began to flow once more from the gouged holes in the stonework, as if oozing from deep within the fabric of the building. “Sweet mother of God,” Casado cried, quickly retracting his hand and clenching it into a fist. He stepped backwards, uncurling his hand and looking at the blood smeared on his palm and fingers. “Sweet mother of God,” he said again, his face ashen.

“It is the sign we have all been dreading,” said Adansoni gravely, “the prophecy we've been watching for. It is the shadow of the first of the three acts after which they shall come through and after which he shall rise on high.”

“This does not mean we are too late to stop the first act,” Korek tried to reason. But Adansoni shook his head.

“For this sign to have come to pass, the first act must have already been performed.”

“Where is the body though?” asked Casado, his face tense.

“No doubt we will find it, soon enough.”

“The horror of it,” muttered Korek, and for a moment both Casado and Adansoni thought the aged Cardinal Bishop might be crying. “Eyes, taken,” and Korek looked back at the hollowed bleeding eyes of the fresco, the suggestion of a tremble in his hand as it touched his face. “Now I understand.”

“We must doubt no more,” said Casado. “We must accept it has begun.” He uncurled his fingers and looked again at the blood trails on his hand, as if trying to divine a reading from them.

“And what part do you feel Tacit plays in all of this?” asked Korek. “The Pope's vision? Tacit's appearance? The prophecy which spoke of one like Tacit coming from the East? The fact he has returned to the city, at this very moment too? Do you think there is any truth in any of it?”

“Whether there is or not, we will not take any risks. When Poldek Tacit is found, we will kill him. Grand Inquisitor Düül understands his orders and knows what needs to be done. There is none other as good as Düül. Not even Tacit.”

“And of the second ritual?” asked Adansoni.

“The lust of flesh?” asked Casado, and all three old men seemed to blanch at its naming. “Düül has been informed of this also. He has the men and he has the apparatus to stop it.”

“Do you have faith that he can? He is gravely stretched, with all that is happening within the city and wider afield.”