Читать книгу The Season of the Beast - Андреа Жапп - Страница 9

THE massive torso bore down on him. A solid wall of rage. It seemed to the novice as though he had been standing for an eternity contemplating the perfect musculature rippling beneath the silky black skin slick with sweat. And yet the horse had only advanced a few paces towards him. The voice rang out again:

‘The letter. Where is the letter? Give it to me and I will spare your life.’

The hand holding the reins tapered off into a set of long gleaming metal talons. The novice was able to make out a pair of straps attaching the lethal glove to the wrist. He thought he saw blood on the metal tips.

His panting breath resounded in his ears. The clawed hand moved upwards, perhaps in a gesture of conciliation. The novice watched each infinitesimal movement as though it were fractured through a prism. The action had been swift and yet the hand appeared to be endlessly repeating the same gesture. He closed his eyes for a split second, hoping to drive away the image. His head was reeling, and a terrible thirst caused his tongue to stick to the roof of his mouth.

‘Give me the letter. You will live.’

From what dark depths did this voice emanate? It belonged to no ordinary mortal.

The novice turned his head, weighing up his chances of escape. Nearby, a thick clump of trees and shrubs shimmered in the setting sun. Their swaying branches were too tight for a horse to pass through. He made a dash for it. Careering like a madman, he nearly fell over twice and had to clutch the overhead branches to steady himself. His wheezing breath rose from his throat in loud gasps. He resisted the urge to collapse on the forest floor and lie there sobbing, waiting for his pursuer to catch up with him. Further to his right, the shrill echo of a magpie’s startled chatter pierced the young man’s eardrums. He ran on. A few more yards. Up ahead in a clearing, a tall bramble patch had colonised every inch of space. If he managed to hide there his pursuer might lose his trail. He leapt into the middle of the hellish undergrowth.

He clasped his hand over his mouth to stifle the cry that threatened to choke him. The blood throbbed in his throat, his ears and his temples.

There, motionless, silent, barely breathing. The brambles snagged his arms and legs and clung to his face. He watched their hooked claws creeping towards him. They quivered, stretching out and slackening, poised to tear into his flesh. They dug into his skin, twisting in order to snare their prey.

He tried hard to convince himself brambles were inanimate, yet they moved.

The night was crimson red when it fell. Even the trees turned crimson. The grass, the moss further off, the brambles, the mist, everything was tinged with crimson.

A terrible pain pulsed through his limbs as though he were being scorched by a flameless fire.

A faint noise. A noise like swirling water. If only he could put his hands over his ears to stop the rushing sound in his head. But he could not. The brambles clung to him with redoubled spite. The sound of approaching hooves.

The letter. It must not be found. He had promised to guard it with his life.

He tried to pray but stumbled over the words of his entreaty. They ran through his mind again and again like some meaningless litany. He clenched his jaw and pulled his right arm free of the spines that were crucifying him. He felt his skin ripping under the plant’s stubborn barbs. His whole hand had turned black. His fingers would barely move, and felt so numb all of a sudden that he found it difficult to push them inside his cape to seize the parchment.

The missive was brief. The hooves were drawing near. In a matter of seconds they would be upon him. He ripped up the small piece of paper and crammed the fragments into his mouth, chewing frantically in order to ingest what was written before the hooves appeared. When the novice finally managed to swallow and the ball moistened with saliva disappeared inside him, he had the impression that those few magnificent lines were ripping his throat apart.

Flat against the forest floor which was thick with blackberry bushes, all he could see at first were the black horse’s front legs. And yet it seemed to him they were multiplying, that suddenly there were four, six, eight animal’s legs.

He tried to stop his breathing – so loud it must be echoing through the forest.

‘The letter. Give me the letter.’

The voice was cavernous, distorted, as though it were coming from the depths of the earth. Could it be the devil?

The throbbing pain from the remorseless brambles disappeared as if by magic. God had heard his prayer at last. The young man rose up, emerging from the barbed snarl, indifferent to the scratches and gashes lacerating his skin. Blood was pouring down his face and from his hands, which he held out before him, red against the crimson night. Beads of it formed along the veins of his forearms as far as his elbows then vanished as quickly as they had come.

‘The letter!’ ordered the booming voice, resounding in his head.

He gazed down at his feet clad in sandals. They were so swollen he could no longer see the leather straps beneath the black blistered flesh.

He had sworn to guard the letter with his life. Was it not a crime then to have eaten it? He had given his word. Now he must give his life. He looked back at the ocean of brambles he had foolishly believed would be his salvation, and tried to judge its height. It stirred with a curious breathing motion, the blackberry branches rising, falling, rising again. Making the most of a long exhalation, he leapt over the hostile mass and ran in a straight line.

It felt as if he had been running for hours, or a few seconds, when the sound of galloping hooves caught up with him. He opened his lips wide and gulped a mouthful of air. The blood rushed to his throat and he burst into laughter. He was laughing so hard that he had to stop to catch his breath. He bent over and only then did he notice the long spike sticking out of his chest.

How did the broad spear come to be there? Who had run him through?

The young man slumped to his knees. A river of red flowed down his stomach and thighs and was soaked up by the crimson grass.

The horse pulled up a yard in front of the novice, and its rider, dressed in a long, hooded cape, dismounted. The spectre removed the lance swiftly and wiped its bloody shaft on the grass. He knelt down and searched the friar, cursing angrily as he did so.

Where was the letter?

The figure leapt up furiously and aimed a violent kick at the dying man. He was seized by a murderous rage just as the dried, shrivelled lips of the young man opened one last time to breathe:

‘Amen.’

His head fell back.

Five long shiny metal claws approached the dead man’s face and the spectre regretted only one thing: that his victim could no longer feel the pitiless destruction they were about to unleash upon his flesh.