Sir Hector de Maris, noble scion of the House of Maris, faithful knight of the Empyrean and gallant protector of the city of Palsgrave, swore under his breath as he scrambled up the rope. More than once had he lost his footing against the ancient stone wall, its face slick with early morning’s fog. The raiding party outside watched the dark swaying shape of their captain anxiously, but not without amusement.
Faced with high walls and a sturdy gatehouse, Sir Hector had produced rope and grappling iron, but the dozen cutthroats under his command had simply refused to make the climb. A knight-marine of the old Palatinate, they reasoned, could surely leap over that wall and land lightly as a cat. Hector could not leap over high walls, and his second-in-command, Sir Erasmus de Mouton, had proved to be deathly afraid of heights.
With dawn fast approaching, and Erasmus’ limbs frozen with terror before he could make the halfway climb, Hector de Maris had no choice but roll up his sleeves and do the deed himself, muttering curses against the evils of mutiny.
At last, Hector reached the wall’s summit, only to be greeted by the sheer drop into a vegetable garden below. After a few tense moments of precarious balancing while he reversed the grappling iron, the black cloaked knight gripped the rope once again, and descended into the monastery grounds below.
Though fumbling through the dark, Hector had little trouble in making his way to the gatehouse. The door opened to his numb fingers and, with dagger clenched in his gloved fist, the knight crept his way into the gatehouse, ready to slay its guardian and open the door to the wolves waiting outside. But, Hector found no man stationed inside, and upon reaching the heavy oak door to the woods beyond, found that the gatehouse was both unguarded, and unlocked.
When the signal was given, and the armed men emerged from the shadows of the trees, it was a grim faced Hector that greeted them in the open doorway. Even the most villainous of the company hesitated at the sight of their captain in the half-light. His eyes were clouded in a shadowy wrath, with dagger in hand, and a soiled cloak that looked like it was smeared with blood, but smelt like squashed turnips.
“Sir?” Erasmus paused with a gulp.
“My sword…” Hector breathed through clenched teeth. Erasmus offered up the scabbarded blade, its edge glinting hungrily as Hector drew it. “We’ve got work to do.”
With no more barriers before them, Hector’s band at last showed their eagerness for the mission. Brandishing swords, cudgels, and pistols, the raiders surged through the gatehouse, and into the abbey. The two knights had only to wait while their minions, hand picked by the Governor himself from the most unscrupulous Paladins and mariners, plied their trade. It was no accident, as Hector well knew, that none of the crew were of the race of Thanes.
Now, the foxes were in the henhouse. First, the bell tower was captured. The crack of the pistol shot, that killed the unfortunate monk within, signalled the beginning of pandemonium. The rest of the band swarmed through the dormitories that flanked the central temple. The sleeping residents within awoke to delirious fright as wild faces and sharp steel came bursting through the doors of their cells. The brothers and sisters of the abbey bleated like frightened sheep at the jeers and threats of the invaders. And, like sheep, they were herded into the bitter cold outside.
Shivering in their dishevelled night shifts, some of them bruised and bleeding, the monks and nuns were bound by their wrists and thrown at the feet of Sir Hector. Wide eyed and awaiting their fate, they stared up at Hector’s bearded face and at his long sword.
Garbed in the same grey helmet and woollen cloak as the rest of his men, the knight growled in an uncouth, yet painfully fake accent. “Aright ye… erm… landlubbers. We er pirates. And ye er our prisoners. We don’t want ta kill the lot of ye. But we will, unless ye show us… the crypts.”
At that, the ears of the surrounding raiders perked up. The Thane folk glanced frightfully at the wolfish grins of their conquerors. Throughout the abbey grounds, the sounds of smashing glass and shattering wood continued to ring out as the other half of the ransackers continued their hunt for plunder. A blood curdling shriek was heard, cut short by the voice of gunpowder shot. It seemed that no more prisoners were needed. The monks and nuns gathered on the grass wailed in despair.
“Quit your bawling!” Hector planted his boot on the chest of a monk and kicked him with more savagery than he had intended. “By Heaven! You’ll show us the crypts, or we’ll bury you in them!”
“Enough of this!” a fat and matronly old woman spoke up, her back straight and her gaze defiant, even as she knelt in the muddy grass. “Call off your mongrels. You’ll have your prize soon enough, curse your eyes.”
Hector nodded at Erasmus, who lifted the old woman to her feet and cut her bonds. Her fellows said nothing as they stared up at her with trepidation. Clearly she was the abbess of this community.
“Well,” she said, her face severe, “call your men back and leave my people alone.”
Hector shook his head. “We don’t leave until we’re out of those crypts. If you try and stall us…” he turned away from her and gestured at one of his men. “If we’re not back in five minutes, start killing them.”
The man bared his teeth in a grin. “One and twenty…” the man brandished his musket and locked eyes with the abbess. “Two and twenty. Three and twenty…”
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The matriarch turned her back at the threat, and marched off with a huff. Hector sheathed his sword, and motioned Erasmus and three others bearing lamps to follow. If the abbess felt any fear, she did not permit herself to show it to her captors.
Making their way across the abbey grounds, the old woman led them into the ancient temple that was the heart of this sacred site. Some of Hector’s men were already inside, scouring the place for hidden treasure beneath the stern gaze of the goddess that loomed over them. Hector looked up at the great monolith that dominated the temple, and into the face of the figure traced upon the stone in delicately curving lines that made the image seem at once both grotesque and elegant. The wild-eyed goddess seemed to stare back at him.
The knight of Palsgrave did not know her name, but to the surly and warlike Thanes of Morn, this was the goddess who guided the dead to the halls of their ancestors. In one hand, the cloaked goddess held a scythe. In the other, a sword. Hector turned impatiently to the abbess, who had paused to gaze up at the engraving before them, as if seeking guidance. The presence of such an image was testament to the reverence the Thanes had to this place. The abbess closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply, before continuing forward.
Towards the back of the temple and behind the goddess, a side passage led into a dark corner of the temple, and a heavy oaken door that had already been broken and ripped from its hinges. The abbess turned to Hector.
“Your reavers have already found the place,” she said flatly. “You need not our help.”
“We smashed the door, but no one’s gone down yet,” the crewmen said as he glanced down the stone stairs, leading into the cold dark below. “We… decided to wait for you, chief.”
Hector took a lamp from one of his men, drew his pistol and gestured towards the abbess. “You go first.”
Without hesitation, the old woman descended the steps and towards her fate, hardly waiting for Hector’s lamp to light her way. At last, they entered into the crypt. The lamplight threw back the darkness and showed a long, low roofed tunnel, lined with stone slabs and niches for the interment of the dead. Some of the niches were filled, their occupants shrouded in thick cloths. The abbess pressed on down the tunnel, Hector and his marauders following furtively behind her. The crewmen eyed the shrouded dead with both superstition and greed. But whatever valuables might have been interred with them, they knew that the knights leading them were seeking an ever greater prize.
There were no traps or supernatural terrors to slow their passage, only a sudden dead end composed of ancient bricks and crumbling mortar. With iron bars and a lust for gold, the crewmen made short work of the wall. And soon, the abbess and her captors looked upon a chamber that had not been seen by any living person for over a thousand years.
The musty tomb opened before them, it’s walls dotted with holes that held a few trinkets that gleamed golden in the lamplight. The raiders pounced upon them, but Hector strode towards the plain stone sarcophagus that sat at the centre of that small, square room. He ordered his men to remove the lid, and they did so eagerly. The sarcophagus was opened in a shower of dust, and Sir Hector de Maris stared down into the empty eye sockets of King Gram, the Conqueror of Morn.
Had Hector or any of his men been Thanes, they would have paled at the sacrilege of this deed, and cowered before this sorcerer-king’s memory. To this day, the people of the river valleys and the coastal plains sang songs of their first king, who came from over the sea, from some lost land, to conquer this island and forge kingdoms for his people. His battles with the wild folk, long since driven into the deep forests, were legendary. And especially so, was his sword, whose hilt was still grasped in his skeletal fingers.
Scathabrand, the serpent slaying sword of King Gram, glittered beneath the lamp light, alive with light amongst the grey dust of the dead. The whole weapon, blade and hilt, seemed to be a single piece, all of a kind of gleaming bronze. Runes were carved up the length of the blade, and the keen edge glittered with red light, as though still dripping with gore.
At the sight of the corpse king and his bloody blade, Erasmus recoiled. “We shouldn’t be here…” his voice quivered. “That thing is cursed.”
“This whole island is cursed,” Hector sneered as he reached for the sword hilt. “But we’ll bring order here yet.”
“Order?” The abbess spat the word. “The peace you offer us is the peace of the grave, Hector de Maris. Aye, I know who you are. You think you come in disguise, but you have only discarded the fleece to show the wolf underneath. Your city is nothing more than a den of thieves and pirates. A curse on you, on Palsgrave, on all Paladins, and a curse on the Empyrean!”
Once, Hector would have hesitated. Once, he wouldn’t have even considered it. But now, it was simple for Sir Hector to allow the cold flame to rise up within him. Without needing to think, he simply raised his pistol. The deafening sound and the sulphurous reek of gunpowder filled the tomb, and the abbess sank limply to the ground, a ball of lead nestled in the ruin of her heart.
Erasmus’ face was a blank mask as he watched the old woman die. He did not make a sound, did not even blink. The next thing he knew, a voice calling his name brought him back to the present. He looked up, and Hector was thrusting something into his hands. The sword, wrapped in Hector’s vegetable stained cloak. Erasmus took the prize reluctantly.
“We have what we came for.” Hector’s voice rang metallic in the cold tomb. “Let’s go.”
By the time the knights reemerged into the chill dawn outside, one of the dormitories was beginning to burn, fire spreading from perhaps a forgotten candle upturned in the tumult. Hector blew on the whistle that hung about his neck. Without any further words, the company took their meagre loot and dashed into the dark woods beyond, leaving their tearful captives bound in the smoking ruins of their abbey.
Leaving the rising pillar of smoke behind them, the party loped back to the reed filled marsh, where they had hidden their longboat. Boarding the vessel and stashing away their stolen goods, the raiders poled the vessel out of the reeds, and began their progress back down the river, to the sea beyond, and back to the city of Palsgrave.
They had made it to the boat just in time, for the sounds of trumpet blasts echoed through mist shrouded land beyond the riverbanks. News of the raid was spreading, and the whole neighbourhood had been roused at rumour of fire and foes. The men on the longboat could glimpse distant torches carried by riders, twinkling like stars in the gloom as they rode their saddle-stags, hunting for enemies.
The rising sun had turned the sky to a crimson shroud. The longboat continued its silent voyage down the river, red as blood. The men plied the oars in silence. Hector and Erasmus sat on either end of the boat, their faces wreathed in shadow. No further words need be spoken. Erasmus considered the weight of the burden he carried, the sword in the dirty cloak, the object of their ominous quest. Erasmus looked up again, stared at the lonely light of the Morning Star, and wondered what kind of power that they had pulled out of the earth, and into the waking world once again.