The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (23 page)

The trickster chuckled as he readied himself. He was clad in a snug-fitting suit of black mail, but now donned his black plate as well, strapping rambraces, rerebraces and elbow-guards to his arms, greaves and knee-cops to his legs.

He was peasant-born, but had given up the rake and hoe in early youth to join a band of men-at-arms who, in times of war, served with the king’s infantry, and, in peace, rented themselves out as mercenaries. His normal weapons were the dagger, the ax, the longbow, but after brutal years on the bloody fields of France and Scotland, he had collected all manner of arms and regalia. He pulled a studded leather brigandine over his hauberk, followed by a surcoat of black linen, and a massive, weather-stained cloak of heavy black wool. His gauntlets were of articulated iron, also black. His helmet was a visored bascinet fixed with a chain aventail. This too was black, and on the front of it he had painted the grinning visage of a skull. The same ghoulish device decked his wood and canvas shield.

Rodric slid a longsword into the scabbard by his waist, and selected the horse he always chose for these occasions; the pale one, Harefoot. Hanging by its flank was a huge scythe, which he’d found in a rotting hay-rig. Once mounted, Rodric put the scythe to his shoulder, hefted his shield, and spurred his animal over the ridge and down the slope.

The boy had made little ground. In the cover of the oak-woods, Rodric was able to overtake him unseen, and suddenly to emerge in front, stopping the lad dead in his tracks.

There was a tense, awesome silence. Rodric knew exactly what the boy was seeing, and how he would interpret it. He, himself, drew quick conclusions from what
he
was seeing. The boy was perhaps eight years old, and wore his fair hair in a fashionable bob, which suggested he had only recently come to destitution. He wore a tight, hooded tunic, which was parti-colored, one side green one side red. His hose, which extended into long spiked shoes, were of a similar pattern, one leg green, one red, creating a harlequin effect; a current fashion in the great country houses. Though the boy’s hands were dirty, the rest of him was clean, which meant he hadn’t come far. For all this, his face was drawn and waxy-white; his eyes were haunted holes of sorrow.

The duo stared at each other, Rodric sitting tall on his horse, shield-device fully displayed, scythe held outwards so that its full curve of razored steel was clearly on view. The boy held his ground, but wobbled back and forth, enfeebled by hunger.

“Don’t you know me?” Rodric asked, his voice rasping and tinny through the visor.

“I think, sir . . . I think that you are Death.”

“King Death!” Rodric asserted. “I am King Death! This realm belongs to
me.
”

The boy clearly had no mind to disagree.

“Well?” Rodric demanded. “Do you not cower? Do you not quake in my presence?”

The boy worked dry, cracked lips together. He gazed at the nightmarish figure with vague wariness, yet such was his extreme of fatigue that he seemed almost indifferent.

“Good sire,” he finally said, “it is an honor to make your acquaintance. But I can not fear you. For I have no fear left inside me.”

“No fear?” Rodric was astounded. Whenever he’d presented this grim pantomime before, the least he usually received from the credulous fools still wandering the devastated land were shrieks of terror, or frantic flights to safety.

The boy rubbed a raw, red eye with the heel of his palm. “Everything I had is gone, my lord. My mother and father, my aunts and uncles, my brothers and sisters. There is nothing left for me.” He sniffled. “No work to earn my keep, no roof for shelter. When the plague first came, I heard whispers that those who lived through it would come to envy those who did not. I understand that now.”

“You haven’t lived through it,” Rodric reminded him. “Yet.”

“And I would that I won’t, sire. Might you strike me now? To end this pain?”

“First I have need of you.”

The boy looked surprised, even puzzled.

“You say you have no lodgings,” Rodric said. “Yet your garb tells a different tale. Aren’t you enthralled to some master of note?”

“I was first-page to Sir Richard Bollinbeau, of Thorby.”

“Thorby?”

“You must know it, sire. For you have been there. A fine manor, with many hides attached. Lord Richard held it as knight-vassal to the Abbott of Shrewsbury. Now it is a sorry place. Everyone who lived there has perished, my master and mistress included, the chamberlain and seneschal, the maids and porters . . . there was no reason for me to stay.”

So the manor-house at Thorby stood empty.

It was difficult for Rodric to conceal his glee. “And you set out to make your fortune elsewhere?” he said.

The boy shook his head solemnly. “No, sire. As I say, I set out to find . . . 
you.
”

Rodric was briefly unnerved by such fatalism, but he kept his composure. “You have succeeded. And your wish will be granted, but not yet. First, you will be my servant.”

If the lad felt this odd, he didn’t question it. In fact, he made an effort to stand up straight, striving to adjust his clothes and wipe the tear-stains from his cheeks.

“Was Thorby a wealthy lordship?” Rodric asked.

“Middling to wealthy, sire. Many tithes and rents were attached, and a goodly herd of cattle. There was a wide acreage of plough-land too, fish-ponds, woods filled with game.”

Rodric’s appetite was whetted just to listen. “And is it far from here?”

“But you have been there, sire. Your mighty fist descended . . . ”

The black knight exploded with suitably godlike wrath:
“Don’t bandy words with me, boy! I have visited numberless places! Even a king cannot remember everything he sees!”

Abashed, the boy hung his head. “It is half a day’s march, my liege.”

“You will lead me there. I am the conqueror of this land, and have booty to claim.” As an afterthought, he added: “Your help will not go unrewarded.”

“I seek only death, sire . . . to join my kin.”

Rodric pondered this. “If death is what you seek . . . death you shall have.”

It was late evening when they reached Thorby. The avenues of the forest, already turning russet and gold, were lit flame-red by the dying sun. Again, everything was pleasing to eye and ear. A pair of stags crossed the path; from somewhere in the spinney came the call of a nuthatch. A breeze blew from the west, rustling the ferns and thickets.

But then there was the stench.

Always these days, the stench. It lingered even in these fair woods. In fact, it grew denser, more cloying, until it didn’t so much taint the air as saturate it.

Even Rodric, who’d known no other smell for twelve months or more, felt his eyes begin to water. Shortly afterwards, the trees parted and they found themselves on the outskirts of Sir Richard’s holding. And what a sight greeted them.

The pestilence had come here like an army, first of all attacking the serfs in the outer villages, for here the victims had died without having a chance of burial. They strewed the fields and the narrow lanes between their hovels as though they had expired in the midst of their everyday chores. That most were little more than bones and tatters already indicated the length of time they had laid undisturbed.

Closer to the heart of the demesne, on the richer land where the sokemen dwelled, there had been more opportunity to prepare for the apocalypse. Again, the hamlets and their connecting roads were carpeted with corpses; nothing stirred save the rats and ravens, but red crosses were visible on cottage doors, grave-pits had been dug, and even carts—laden with limp, rag-bound figures—sat motionless, their horses cropping the cud, awaiting drivers who now would never come. In the center of one village there was a timber chapel with a thatched roof. Its front door stood open on blackness, from which came a monstrous buzzing of flies. Rodric didn’t need to enter to know what he would find in there: bodies piled seven or eight deep; when all else failed, holy sanctuary would have been the only place left where the dying wretches could imagine they’d find solace or comfort, or—laughably, he now realized—refuge. Doubtless, the priest lay among them, maybe buried at the bottom of the putrefying mound.

The manor house had apparently been the last bastion to fall.

It was an imposing granite edifice, and it stood on a green hillock overlooking the surrounding weald. A low earthwork encircled it, and on the top of this a wooden palisade had been constructed. It would be difficult to assault such a structure, but this new enemy had made short work even of these defenses. Mailed serjeants still kept watch from the parapets, their gaze leveled across the landscape. They would shout no challenge, however, sound no alarum. When Rodric drew close, he saw that the faces under their wide-brimmed helms were clusters of black and purple boils; their staring eyes were glazed and lifeless.

“Every man held his ground ’til the last,” the boy wept. “Sir Richard issued orders they should shoot at plague-carriers who came close.” He indicated several husks of arrows half-buried in the grassy slope. “But still you came, overwhelming us in the heart of our stronghold.” He trailed doggedly up the stony path to the outer gate.

This already stood open, presumably where he’d unbarred it, himself, and exited earlier that day. He passed through it, beckoning Rodric to follow. The knight glanced again at the ghoulish sentries, who would guard this place now until their flesh and muscle fell to carrion, then cast down his scythe, dismounted and followed.

Beyond the gate, the bailey, which might ordinarily be muddy and trampled and overrun with geese and pigs, was bare of life. More bodies lay here and there: servants—a couple beside the well, one in the entrance to the grain-house—and several men-at-arms who had tumbled from their gantries. The implacable silence was haunting. It was a
listening
silence, Rodric fancied, an eavesdropping silence—it made him feel that someone was watching him. He appraised the manor house warily. With its cruciform arrow-slits and high, castellated frontage, it was a brooding presence. Its great front door, a colossal slab of wood studded with iron nail-heads, was firmly closed, as though someone might still be inside, seeking to keep out marauders.

For long moments, Rodric was unnerved by this. Even in the Valley of Death it was a difficult thing for a low-born like he to overcome the age-old strictures that forbade him to approach the houses of the mighty, much less assault them. He knew it was nonsense to think that way—the old order no longer existed—but instincts, it seemed, died harder than men. He threw off his cloak—suddenly it felt hot and cumbersome. He was inclined to throw off his helm as well, to finally give up this charade. What was the point of it? He was here, he could sack his gold, finish off the witness, and flee—but some uncertainty, maybe the innate sixth sense that had kept him alive not just through war but now through plague, coaxed him continue the deception.

He strode to the manor house door, putting his shoulder to the wood and attempting to push his way in. There was no give; the door held fast even under Rodric’s prodigious strength. He stood back. There was no ring-handle, only a large key-hole, which significantly had no key inserted. There’d be no other means of ingress, no tradesman’s door or undercroft. The outbuildings in the bailey were adequate for those purposes, acting as servants’ quarters and storerooms. This main building was purely the residence for the lord and his family, and, of course, for their trove.

He turned to the boy. “This place is locked, whey-face!”

The boy nodded. “Lord Richard’s final instruction. Someday his heirs—for he felt certain they exist somewhere—will come and claim it.”

“Lord Richard has no heir but me,” Rodric replied. “You know that, for you have seen my power. Bring me a key. Unlock the door, so I may claim what is mine.”

For the first time, the boy hesitated to obey. He glanced up at the house where he’d served for so long. Rodric lurched towards him, crouched and brought the full ghastly visage of his skullish helm to bear. “Do you refuse me?”

He made sure to sound shocked rather than angry, but the boy flinched backwards all the same. “No . . . sire,” he stuttered. “The key is in the stable.” He indicated a ramshackle structure, with two heavy wooden doors. “I put it there for safe-keeping, along with my own family. They too were servants here.”

“You left your family in the stable?”

“To preserve them,” the boy explained. “Laid them under straw to save them from scavengers. Though I worry the rats may still feast on them.” He grimaced, new tears glimmering in his swollen eyes. “The rats own much of England that once was Man’s.”

“The rats own nothing,” Rodric assured him, standing again. “England is mine. All of it. Now do as I command.” He took the boy by his arm, turned him about-face and propelled him across the yard with a firm push.

The boy staggered off to do his new master’s bidding. Rodric followed him part of the way, stopping once to survey his surroundings. The ember of the sun rested on the western parapet, and though long shadows now stole across the yard, it bathed the main building with a sultry, orange glow. Rodric had raided many houses and castles during his time in arms, and the scene here was depressingly familiar. There was ample evidence of last-minute preparations to withstand siege. Provisions had been brought from outside—logs and kindling, bushels of corn, sacks of nuts and fruit; all now stacked against walls, though many of these had been kicked and spilled in the chaos; the animals and fowls were noticeably absent—no doubt they had all been slaughtered, salted and put into stock. Elsewhere tools and weapons lay discarded, jobs were half-done, there’d been a general neglect of menial chores—the autumn leaves lay unswept, household rubbish cluttered every corner.

He glanced back at the house, wondering where the lord and his lady, themselves, were. Probably in their bedchamber. Often before, when he’d broken into plague-stricken houses, he’d found the master and mistress tucked up in bed. For all the gore and pus-clotted sheets, quite often they’d be clinging together in a final embrace. They might even be clasping a crucifix between them, seeking to sanctify their marriage in death, in a way they’d never managed to in life.