Читать книгу Abomination - Gary Whitta - Страница 13

Alfred told Wulfric the whole story as they left the dungeon and headed back toward the Great Hall. Along the way, they visited Alfred’s personal physician, who ministered to Wulfric’s wrist. It could have been much worse, the doctor observed as he applied a salve to the wound and wrapped it; there had been one man who had lost a hand to that beast the same way and another who had not returned from his visit at all. Visits to the dungeon were strictly regulated now, and none were made without the King’s permission.

By the time they arrived at the Great Hall, Wulfric had heard all. Of how Aethelred had discovered the arcane scrolls and devised a plan to use them, as a way to bolster England against future Danish threats without endangering English lives. How the plan had sounded so promising at the time. How Aethelred had been given license to conduct his experiments, in hopes of perfecting a way to control the transformations and the abominable creations that resulted. How Alfred had finally shuttered the whole endeavor when he learned the full, sickening truth of where Aethelred’s obsession had led him. And of how Aethelred, using the dark skills he had mastered, changed the very guards assigned to imprison him into monsters who then aided his escape from the tower.

Wulfric’s head was swimming long after Alfred had finished recounting the tale. He sat in silence at the heavy oak table at the center of the hall and stared into the distance as his mind attempted to reconcile it all. He had been raised to believe in the existence of things beyond his understanding, forces invisible to him and far greater than himself. But to actually see such things with one’s own eyes was another matter entirely. No known scientific or natural phenomenon could account for what he had witnessed down in that dungeon or for the tale the King had told him afterward. And he agreed with Alfred—no God that he held to would ever create something so diabolical, so wicked, so utterly without virtue. Something so . . . hellish.

“This is Chiswick,” announced Alfred, snapping Wulfric from his thoughts. Wulfric stood to greet the man and, as always, found himself not knowing quite where to look as the King’s counselor bowed to him. Chiswick was bull-necked, bald-headed, and stocky, an unremarkable-looking man save for the ugly scar that ran diagonally across his face from just beneath his left eye and across the bridge of his nose and both lips, ending just beneath the right side of his chin. Wulfric had seen enough war wounds to recognize this as one, probably inflicted by a Danish longsword years ago. Though the scar was unsettling to many, Wulfric found himself reassured by it. He gave more weight to the words of men who had learned the price of war firsthand. They tended to speak truth more plainly.

“It is my great honor, Sir Wulfric,” said Chiswick, as he completed his bow. “The King has regaled me with the tales of your heroism many a time.”

“It’s a fine line between heroism and duty,” Wulfric replied. “I prefer to think of it as the latter.”

“Chiswick is my most senior military advisor and chief spy-master,” said Alfred. “Very little happens in the kingdoms without his knowledge. He has been endeavoring to keep track of Aethelred since his escape. Chiswick?”

Chiswick unrolled a map of lower England across the table, positioning goblets and candlestick holders at its corners to hold it in place. The map was heavily adorned with annotations in Chiswick’s own hand.

As he studied it, Wulfric was immediately taken back to the Danish war. Often had he stood in Alfred’s tent with the King and his war council studying campaign maps and discussing strategy. The more senior of Alfred’s advisors had bristled at a commoner being invited to such high-level meetings, but Alfred, having come to know Wulfric after Ethandun, had insisted on it. All these nobles and knighted men tell me only what they think I want to hear, he had told the young Wulfric. Their desire to win my favor by constantly agreeing with me will get us all killed. I need men courageous enough to disagree with me when I am wrong.

And so Wulfric had done as he was asked and spoken the truth as he saw it. Alfred’s highborn advisors had had no choice but to suffer his presence, restricting their objections to furtive looks among themselves, particularly when the King took Wulfric’s advice over their own.

“Aethelred left here with six of our own men that he perverted to his will,” Chiswick said, pointing to Winchester on the map. “That was twenty days ago. Since then we have received numerous reports of disturbances throughout the northeast quarter of Wessex. Commonfolk fleeing their homes, claiming to have been attacked by rabid beasts like none they have ever seen. With each fresh report, the number of beasts grows. I believe Aethelred is working his way toward the Danelaw border, and that his army grows larger with each new town and village he enslaves along his route.”

To Wulfric it all still seemed so unbelievable. He had sat in dozens of military briefings just like this one, and yet nothing like it at all. This was more like something from a nightmare, or a ghost story told around the campfire by journeymen to frighten one another. It could not be real, and yet he could not deny what he had seen with his own eyes. It took a while for his mind, still racing, to focus and find its first question.

“How large is his force, by the most recent report?”

“The villagers we have spoken to are not the most reliable,” Chiswick answered. “Many are in shock, babbling. But the most coherent among them said they reckoned close to a hundred.”

Wulfric took a moment to contemplate that. A hundred of those . . . things . . . such as he had seen in Alfred’s dungeon? The thought chilled him.

“Where is he now?”

“The last known sighting was here,” replied Chiswick, gesturing to a small town about sixty miles short of the boundary where Wessex ended and the Danelaw began. “At his present rate, he could be at the Danes’ border by month’s end.”

“And his intention when he gets there?” Wulfric asked.

“He first proposed this force of beasts as a deterrent against another Danish invasion,” said Chiswick. “But now . . . I hesitate to try to predict the actions of a man so clearly mad, but I believe he intends to launch some kind of preemptive attack into their territory.”

“If he seriously intends to attack the Danish on their own ground with so small a force, I suspect this problem will take care of itself soon enough,” offered Wulfric.

“A hundred may not seem like many,” said Alfred, “but in our experience, just one of these beasts is the match of a dozen armed men. Who knows how many more Aethelred will have acquired by the time he reaches the Danelaw? With this power he employs, his enemies do not fall on the battlefield—they become his allies. Soon he could be using it to turn the Danes on themselves.”

A silence settled on the Great Hall for a moment. Alfred waited while the full implication of that sank in. Wulfric had become an expert at war, in both theory and practice, but this was no longer war as he understood it. The rules had changed. In the old way, the way it had been for thousands of years, both sides lost men in battle. But under Aethelred’s new rules, the victor converted the vanquished into his own ranks and grew more powerful with each conquest. It was a terrifying idea, both strategically and in other ways that troubled Wulfric far more deeply.

It was Chiswick who broke the silence. “Our concern is not a war between the Danes and Aethelred’s army, if one can even call it that. It is that any kind of attack from within Wessex will be perceived to be in the King’s name. If Aethelred breaks the accord and attacks the Danelaw, it will stir up an already precarious situation and perhaps lead to a counterinvasion.”

“And another all-out war,” Wulfric observed. It was a strange thing, he thought, to be considering ways in which to prevent an attack against the Norse, after all the times he had helped to plot them. He had no love for the Danes, after all they had done to him and those he loved, but the kingdom simply could not afford another war.

“My advice is simple,” he said. “Dispatch the full force of your armies to intercept Aethelred before he reaches the Danelaw. Crush him quickly, with overwhelming force, and end this thing before it begins.”

“Would that it were that easy,” Alfred responded with a heavy sigh, looking to Chiswick.

“Our forces are scattered throughout the kingdom,” said Chiswick, pointing to various annotations on his map indicating the disposition of infantry encampments and other military assets. “Even at best speed, they have little chance of assembling into a force sufficient to overwhelm Aethelred before he reaches the Danelaw. And even were it possible, committing such a force would leave the rest of Wessex ill defended should the Norse seize the opportunity to attack from elsewhere along the border. No, our best chance, we believe, would be to take him by surprise using a small, swift, mobile force, one specially formed for this task.”

Wulfric scratched his head, confused. “If Aethelred’s force is equal to more than a thousand men, what chance does a small contingent have against him? Most likely you would only be sending more men for him to enslave.”

For the first time, Alfred allowed himself a smile. Wulfric knew it well, the wry look the King adopted when he had a bright scheme. “Aethelred is not the only one with magickal tricks up his sleeve,” he said. “Come with me to the chapel. Thank you, Chiswick.”

The priest paced up and down before the stone altar of Winchester’s chapel. He had been told to await the King’s presence, and so far he had been waiting for more than an hour. Yet it was not the waiting that bothered him but the worry of what would be expected of him when the King did at last arrive. He had been practicing all hours of the day and night and was confident he had mastered what had been asked of him. But he also knew, more than most, what was at stake—and the price of failure, both for himself and for the men who would be placing their lives in his hands. One small mistake, one mispronounced syllable or moment of hesitation, would spell disaster.

The irony had not escaped him. He was not by nature cut out for the martial professions; he had entered the priesthood largely because it was a path of peace. But that path had now twisted in an unforeseen way and was leading him into the very thing he had hoped to avoid—a war, and not just any war, but one fought with weapons more horrendous than anything ever before conceived by man. A shiver ran through him, only partly because it was cold in the small stone-walled chamber.

He heard the chapel door open behind him and spun around to see King Alfred enter with a man he did not recognize. He looked to the young priest like a commoner, but the steeled look in the man’s eyes suggested he was more likely a soldier of some kind. The priest swallowed deep and corrected his posture as they approached.

“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing low before the King.

“Cuthbert, this is Sir Wulfric,” Alfred said. The priest’s eyes widened a little; he might not have recognized the scruffy-looking man standing beside the King, but he most certainly knew the name. He was standing in the presence of not one living legend but two. He looked to Wulfric and tried to conjure something to say, but could not think of anything that would not make him sound like a complete idiot.

Alfred sensed the priest’s awkwardness; he had grown used to it by now and knew it would be merciful to move swiftly to the business at hand.

“Cuthbert was a junior cleric under Aethelred at Canterbury,” the King explained to Wulfric. “He has a keen aptitude for languages, so the archbishop put him to work studying the scrolls. He was the first to successfully decipher what had baffled many other more learned scholars.”

“If I had known what lay within them, I would never have consented to it,” Cuthbert was quick to offer. He had seen what the archbishop had wrought in Winchester’s courtyard, from the words he had helped to decode, and the guilt lay heavy on him. He felt responsible for every twisted, malformed monstrosity the archbishop had brought forth and wanted now only the opportunity to help set it right again.

“I say it not to assign blame,” Alfred said, placing a reassuring hand on the cleric’s shoulder. “That is set squarely on Aethelred’s shoulders alone. I mean to say that you are among the brightest of Canterbury. And perhaps now our brightest hope.”

Cuthbert felt briefly uplifted by the compliment, only to grow even more nervous as the King’s words reminded him of the responsibility that now weighed upon him. He placed a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed nervously.

Wulfric did not know what to make of the callow, fidgety little man who stood before him. Little more than a boy, really. There had been many like him during the war, pressed into service despite their protests and their tears. Most of them had not survived long. But behind all the awkwardness and jitters, Wulfric recognized a spark of something in the boy’s eyes—a keen intellectual curiosity that he remembered once burning within himself as a young man, before war had made it a luxury to be swept aside. In a way he envied Cuthbert. Before the Norse came, he had often dreamed of joining the clergy himself and devoting himself to a life of quiet scholarship. In the next life, he told himself.

“You came with Aethelred to Winchester?” he asked Cuthbert.

Cuthbert nodded. “I was one of many he brought from Canterbury to assist him with his . . .” He hesitated, looking for the right word. “His . . . experiments. I dared not refuse, but I feigned a sickness contracted on the journey so that I might have as little hand in it as possible. Many of us were not comfortable with what the archbishop was doing. Few of us had the courage to refuse or question him.”

“What became of the other clerics when he escaped?”

“One tried to stop him. He was turned, God help him. The others fled shortly after for fear of being punished for complicity in his crimes.”

“But not you.”

“I have no family, no means, nowhere else to go. I cannot return to Canterbury. And even if I could, I would not. I have vowed to help somehow undo what I helped to bring about, and I told His Majesty so.”

Wulfric smiled; he was beginning to like this man. Oftentimes a fretful demeanor like Cuthbert’s could be mistaken for spinelessness, but the more Wulfric took the measure of him, the more he was convinced that Cuthbert was no coward. From his own hard-won experience, he knew that true courage was not the absence of fear but doing what must be done in the often-paralyzing presence of it.

“In Cuthbert’s study of the scrolls, he discovered that they contained more than just the words of transformation,” Alfred explained. He looked at Cuthbert. Still ridden with nerves, it took the cleric a moment to realize that the King was expecting him to continue the tale.

“Oh! Yes. The scrolls also contained detailed descriptions of several other quite interesting invocations, some of which I believe were intended to be used to counter the transformative effect. Put simply, I believe it may be possible to bless an object—such as a suit of armor—with a ward of protection that would dispel any magick directed at it.”

Wulfric looked at Alfred with puzzlement. “I thought you had ordered the scrolls destroyed.”

“I have been working mostly from memory,” explained Cuthbert. “I have a very good one.”

“Does Aethelred know of this?” Wulfric asked him.

“No. By the time I deciphered these counterspells, I had seen for myself what the archbishop was doing, and I decided it was best not to pass on any further knowledge to him. When he asked me, I told him that the rest of the scrolls were beyond my ability to translate.”

Wulfric was impressed. A nervous little milksop this young priest may have been, with a lifespan likely measured in seconds on any field of battle, but Wulfric’s father had taught him to value intelligence and sharpness of mind more than any other quality, and it was fast becoming clear that Cuthbert had no shortage of either. Still, it was difficult not to feel extreme unease as he considered the strategy that Alfred had proposed with such confidence. Kings, Wulfric contemplated, were always more sanguine about their war strategies than were the men charged with carrying them out on the battlefield. He gave Alfred a skeptical glance, such as few of those at court would dare attempt.

“This is your plan? Magickal armor?”

“I’m sure by now you would agree that Aethelred’s magick is no fantasy,” said Alfred. “If the arcanery with which he conjured these monsters is not in doubt, why should we not have as much confidence in the other spells gleaned from the very same scrolls?”

“I look at this as I would any other weapon of war,” said Wulfric. “I will believe in its usefulness once it has been proven in the field. How exactly do you propose to test this?”

“I thought we might put the armor on you and throw you at Aethelred,” said Alfred with a sly smile.

Wulfric turned again to the cleric. “Does your knowledge extend to anything we might use offensively against Aethelred and his horde?”

Cuthbert looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, my lord . . . such as what?”

Wulfric glared at him, irritated. “I don’t know! A rain of fire? Enchanted arrows? You tell me, you’re the expert!”

Cuthbert looked down at the floor, embarrassed. “No, my lord. Nothing like that, I’m afraid.”

“So you can protect me against this conjurer’s magicks, but not against the beasts he creates.”

“For that, my friend, you will have to rely upon your sword, and your wits, as you always have,” said Alfred, with a smile that he hoped might foster some encouragement. It did not succeed.

Wulfric sighed. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that there was to be no escaping this dire duty—not only for the debt he felt he still owed Alfred, but because the more he saw and heard of Aethelred’s sorcery, the more he genuinely feared for the chaos and destruction it might spread. He could refuse and go home, but then how long might it be before war or something even more terrible arrived in his village, threatening his wife and child? No, this mad priest had to be stopped. And if he would not do it, then who would?

“I will want to choose the men I take with me,” he said to Alfred with the weary tone of reluctant acceptance.

“Of course,” said the King, trying not to show his relief.

Cuthbert was still standing there, quietly wringing his hands. Wulfric looked to him now with a nod. “Starting with him.”

Cuthbert’s eyes widened in alarm. “Excuse me . . . what?”

“If this campaign is to be successful, my men and I will rely heavily on your knowledge. Your unique knowledge.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” stammered Cuthbert, with the beginnings of what felt a lot like panic. “But I can discharge my duties here, enchant whatever armor you require before you and your men depart. Anything you—”

“That will not be sufficient,” Wulfric interrupted with a wave of his hand. “This magick of yours is unproven. We may require your expertise to maintain or adapt it as needed. And we will almost certainly encounter situations that will require improvisation. You will serve us best in the field.”

Cuthbert could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears like a drum, and darkness seemed to be creeping in from the corners of his vision. His knees felt weak. His stomach tightened. His mouth was suddenly so dry he could barely speak, but his keen sense of self-preservation somehow compelled the words to come forth.

“My lord,” he offered meekly, voice cracking. “With respect, I am a scholar, not a soldier.”

Wulfric clapped his hand heartily upon Cuthbert’s shoulder, and the cleric’s legs almost gave way beneath him.

“My friend,” Wulfric said, “as of today, you are both.”

Cuthbert was dismissed, and as the priest scurried off in the direction of the nearest outhouse, Wulfric and Alfred walked back from the chapel to the courtyard where Wulfric’s horse was stabled. For a while, neither man spoke. But the pall of unspoken words hung over them both until Alfred was forced to say something. Anything.

“Where will you start?” he asked.

“I will find Edgard,” said Wulfric, with no hesitation. He had already thought that far ahead. “There is no battle, no campaign I can conceive of, that I would fight without him at my side. Once he is with me, the others I need will follow.”

Alfred nodded his approval, and they walked several more steps without a word. Wulfric gazed at the stones between his feet, deep in sober contemplation. “Of course, first I must give the news to Cwen,” he observed, his voice lower now, as though speaking to himself.

“How will she take it?”

“Truth be told, I do not know which I fear more—Aethelred’s army of abominations or her reaction,” replied Wulfric, only partly in jest. “I promised her I would never go to war again. That was her one and only condition when she agreed to marry me.”

“You are not going to war,” offered Alfred. “This is a singular mission on behalf of your King—and frankly, your God. Cwen is a woman of faith, is she not? Surely she will understand that.”

Wulfric gave it thought. “A crusade,” he said, finally.

“Just a small one,” suggested Alfred wryly, with a smile that he noticed Wulfric did not return. Alfred knew his friend well enough to see that there was something more on his mind, something even he was reluctant to voice.

“Is there anything else you would ask of me?” he said. And that was enough to stop Wulfric in his tracks. The knight turned and looked at Alfred hard, with something as close to anger as the King had ever seen directed at him.

“I have only one question to ask,” said Wulfric. “How could you have been so blind as to not see where this madness, this . . . heresy, would lead you?”

Alfred looked about him as though searching for an answer. And Wulfric saw now in his face things he had seen many times in other men, but never in his King. Remorse. Guilt. Shame.

“I have asked myself that question many times. I have also asked God. So far, neither of us have an answer. All I can offer is this: Everything I have done in my life, including this horrifically misguided venture, has been compelled by a single aspiration—to protect and defend this kingdom. So it pains me more than you can understand to know that my actions may have now put it in greater peril than any Norseman ever did. But that is why I ask you now, not as your King, but as your friend, to help me this one last time. To help unmake the wrong that I myself have made.”

Wulfric looked at his King. Alfred found his expression impossible to read, and he waited, for some gesture of understanding or, dare he hope, absolution. But all Wulfric gave was a single nod before he turned and walked away toward the stable where his horse was waiting.

“It will be done,” he said, without looking back.

When Wulfric arrived home, it was worse than he had feared. Cwen bawled and cursed and threw everything at him that her heavily pregnant state would allow. Alfred had been wrong, of course—not about Cwen being a woman of faith, but in suggesting that it would help her understand why Wulfric had to leave her when her belly was ripe and she needed him most.

Wulfric knew that Cwen would never have believed a story of monsters and magick, so he told her instead a tale of a dangerous band of heretics led by a deranged priest who was spreading blasphemies and had to be dealt with—it was, after all, still true, in a manner of speaking. But invoking duty even to both God and King carried little weight with Cwen, whose priorities now began and ended with the gift she carried inside her. Tell Alfred he can stick his little crusade up his arse! she had screamed at him between bouts of hurling copper pots from across the kitchen. God does not want you chasing mad priests a hundred miles away—he wants you here with me and your unborn child! How can you do this to us now?

This is why warriors should never marry, Wulfric later thought to himself as he packed his saddlebag and nursed a bruise on his forehead from a milk jug that Cwen had aimed particularly well. Because war is a jealous mistress. She has a way of calling us back to her, long after we thought we had bid farewell for good.

Wulfric mounted Dolly and headed out that same evening. He had hoped to at least stay the night, but Cwen had told him in no uncertain terms that the only place he would be sleeping would be the stable. And so he rode into the night, heading east, to where he knew he would find Edgard. At the top of the hill, he stopped and looked back, hoping to catch sight of Cwen watching him from the doorway or the window. But there was no sign of her. Sadly, he turned away and spurred his horse on.