The fog drifts as I wake from the mire. The sludge from the shallow ponds will have to be my linens now. There is no servant to wake me. Just the calls from the bullfrog and the pains from my sores. I can feel my flesh stick to the broken branches and leaves as I rise. I must have been bleeding since the night.
It doesn't take a long walk before I reach the edge of the wood. I hoped to reach a town. A brook. Perhaps another kingdom. But angels no longer line my path and guide me. All I see within my reach is fog upon a dead land. I don't know what lies beyond, if anything at all. I'm weak, can barely stumble, but I let spite carry me. I haven't kept food in days. The sickness has spread to my spirit, rotted my mind, bled my body. All I needed was care and rest. What I got was an uprising. I plan revenge I know I'll never act on. Childish things. Creep over the mortar walls while the people rest. Cut holes in their barrels of wine so they're forced to drink from the well. Then, before the people wake, finish my bath in their water, scrub my spots and scabs clean, and walk out the front gates. I know it's nothing but fantasy, but it's the thoughts of malice that keep my heart beating fast and my head heated in this cold. I know I won't act. Even before the sickness I didn't have much fight in me. I've put steel to flesh in my past. God knows how I've warred. But it's been a long while since I last donned my helm. Domains have risen and fallen since then. I wear the thoughts of hate as the fog carries snow to the border of the fields. A town breaches my vision as I strain to look for shelter.
It's little less than a hovel. The mud has frozen in shape to the footfalls and wagon wheels. My feet cut into the frost as I ricochet between huts, hoping to find a well. It must be mid-morning, yet no one is working. Not even in the larger structures can I hear iron work or kindling. In all my efforts, I find a trough, the water frozen at the top. I break the water free with my knuckles and begin my drink. I won't fabricate against my worry. This was a ghost town, for sure, and the silence frightened me. Was everyone dead? Like me?
"Are you a leper?" I was called from the threshold of the stable-- no livestock.
"Who-- No, I'm not."
"What about those spots on you? Were you beaten?"
"No, I am ill, this is true. Though I am no leper."
"I think it best you leave. We don't need your pollution here."
"Looks to me like there's no one to pollute."
"He's a scout. A vagrant they forced to wander in promise of food." Another voice sounds from the shadows of the stable.
The two men step forth into the light snow. They size me up as I do for them. They're underfed, though one is quite large. The big one wears a cap to tame his thick, black hair. He holds an iron poker close to his thigh. The one I spoke to before was smaller in stature. His red hair grown enough in length to cover his freckled neck. To judge from their dresswear, they're farmers. To judge from mine, the big one isn't too far off in his assumptions of me being a vagrant. My hair has grown to my shoulder blades. The barber, like most, refused my presence for some time. My hair has grown white and my beard isn't far behind. I walk without tunic or shoes, only a pair of pants to keep me decent. My eyes have sunk into the abyss from which I slowly slip.
The big one mumbles: "We should kill him."
And the small: "Then they'll know we're here."
And I: "You clearly don't know me."
"We know that, you old fool," says the large. "The question is what to do with you. Wouldn't be the first time we've buried the bones of the elderly in these hills. Don't think we'd grace you with a stone marker, however."
"Can't. Ground's too frozen. We'll have to settle for the hogs," suggests the ginger.
I can't buy into their act. A charade to scare away wandering thieves and lowlifes, but I have the feeling from the look on their scared faces that they could hardly harm pigs in slaughter. "Act your make, farmer. You may be stupid, but you're no murderer. You clench your fists to hide your shaken hands. And you, if you were serious on your threat you'd look to your lands. The rocks are too close to the ground. It's why you grow wheat instead of anything useful. You've buried nothing here."
The little one, his hair moves like his scalp aflame, pulls a knife from his waist and sheaths it into mine. It feels like a punch that cracks into my insides. I drop to my knees and cut them on the frozen ground.
"We don't bury them here. We cart them further from the coast. Don't think we'll need the courtesy for you."
I was wrong on both accounts it would seem. I've been too proud in always being right, regardless of whether or not I was wrong. The big one steps heavily forward, his feet sounding off like the clatter of horses.
"If you see the devil in your wake--"
Here we are--
"--you tell him to save a seat for the Son of Lilith."
--the last words I'll ever hear. The big one winds up his fist, poker stretched, and as he clicks my head with iron, I notice my heartbeat turn to the footfalls of horses. The world becomes night. In death there are no stars.
* * *
Against my will, I wake again. It's strange, but when it snows, I can hear the silence itself. I judge from the snow around me, I haven't been unconscious long, though the wound in my side leaves me cold. My first thought is to leave before I allow them to kill me, and my second thought is why wouldn't I?
The blood had pooled and begun to freeze beneath me. In the numbness of the snowfall I've yet to feel more than a splinter in my waist. My head, however, feels a weight stronger than my shoulders. I rise, against my own wishes, and lean my body forward enough to stumble. My attackers are nowhere I can see, though I don't know why I'd seek them. Perhaps I want to make them good on their word. Put this spoiled dog out of his misery.
Further into the thicket of huts I hear yelps and cries echo the roads. My hand falls from the wound in my side out of forgetfulness. My body is numb to every illness and ailment. It's my eyes that hurt to turn. The white fog of the snowdrift turns grey the closer I get to the smell. It's a sense I haven't experienced in a long time. It's a sweeter sense than most would guess, the smell of flesh. The crackle is a sound unlike anything else as well. Less the crack of branches in the fire and closer to that of the popping of cooked mud.
A building burns. A church or a whorehouse all the same. The hidden people evacuate but they seem more content with the flame. They're pulled from the heavy wooden doors like sought-after prizes. The women's fingers are pried from the corners of their hiding places while the men have their heads pried from their shoulders. My hand is warmed by the blood pooling from my side. It's the only small comfort I have. The one who rendered me unconcious, he lies back to the wall next to me. His eyes half-open, he seems tired of the situation. He wears a scarf of blood around his neck that spills over his tunic and into the mud. He still brandishes the iron at his side. The little one, he's limp, held by his leg and laying on the ground from the back of a horse in front of the burning building. The rider holds him like a child brings his blanket. The man who holds him wears a shell of steel, ill-fitted and probably wrenched from the chest of a drunk and unprepared lieutenant. The horsemen around him don't laugh or grin like the villains from stories. No, they seem quite interested in these affairs. The men that yank the helpless from the cinder, I notice, are varied in age. The old are dead in the streets, but the generations after them work together to pull the remaining villagers into the open. The men on horseback, they're having the villagers do their work. The old and feeble-minded were taken care of immediately it would seem. The others must've been promised life to harvest the women's lives. Even with the blood slipping between my fingers, my body shivers and my head gets heavy. I bend down for the iron poker and lose my balance against the wall. I use the poker as a cane and walk away from the spectacle. I watch my feet take smaller and smaller steps as I walk the length of a house. My feet match against hooves in front of me. Hot, relaxing breath warms my head as I come face-to-face with the creature.
"Hey, this one's trying to get out of his work!"
I don't know how I find the strength, but I mimic the call of St. Sebastian and plunge my spear into the heart of the beast. It rears in madness, and doesn't touch me, but I fall in fright. I'm on the ground again, a familiar bed. I hear the thud of the horse and the cries of a man, the foreground noise to the wails behind me. I'm lifted before I even see them. Angels with scarred faces and broken teeth.
They say to see or hear God would be too much for any man to bare. The songs of angels will pierce your ears. For this reason they mask their voices behind the choirs of believers, God hides behind the faces of men. I'm not treated with the same kindness. I hear the angels bark insults and wishes to torture and kill. The angels stomp their feet and raise me to a God hidden in the face of some hybrid. This thing in stolen steel gleans a jaw of jagged teeth and stares with blackened eyes. His head is void of hair so his enemies cannot pull him in battle. But I look at his armor, his sword, even the breed of his horse. Nothing matches. He doesn't win battles, he wins ambushes against drunks and sleeping families. Steals their belongings to build himself into a man.
His grin barely moves as God speaks: "You haven't set yourself up for an easy death, curr." They raise my arms high to hold me and stretch the hole in my side. I don't look but I feel my feet get warmer from the falling blood. I can feel everything again, and it feels like Hell. "You look at me you pile of stink. You crawl from the dead and we'll put you right back. Did you think you'd hobble from the corpses and thank God for a second chance?" He'll never know how wrong he is. I've already had my third and fourth chances and I'm looking to run out.
He gives me a closer look at his thief's sword and rests the point under my eye. "Stop looking to the Heavens. If you were meant for second chances God would've let you get away. You're in my domain now. Look to the Son of Lilith." I lower my head and meet his charred eyes. The fire from the building dances far behind me, and has risen too high to control. The flame flickers in the eyes of the Son of Lilith. It's something in his eyes that give me a change of heart, in fact. I was a good king. I wasn't always fair, but that didn't always matter. I deserve something better. Not to rot at the feet of this illness, but not at the foot of a man little better than a spoilt dog, either. Take me to the gates of the nearest castle and try me for the lives I took. Give me lashes for every swordstroke I made in war. Let me climb the steps in the center of the square and let the people trumpet my sins. 'Child-killer! Rapist! Thief!' Let the axe fall and the people cheer and though the people judge me as a man let God judge me for my worth. Not this worthless farmer.
"You are no son of anything," I say. "You were abandoned by God. There's nothing left for you but to wander in Hell." His sword drops to his horse's side and he taps her on her ribs. I expect him to laugh or jest at a delusioned old man but he does not. He stares. "Call yourself the Son of Lilith if you'd like. Call yourself the Son of the Serpent if it fits. It doesn't matter. God has taken those that will join the ranks of angels and left the rest of us behind. He cares not your name. He's already forgotten you."
"Spout religion and redemption all you'd like. You won't have a choice where you end up. Put him in the flames!"
I'm drug backward but the hold goes limp when I speak. A few even let go. "Redemption? Revelations! You think the fire chains me? Look to the wound in my side. Your men killed me. You threw me to the corpses and yet I walk and speak again. Is it no wonder I bare the wound of Christ?"
"His head bleeds! Look!" A man drops my arm and the rest fall away and group again in the sanctity of their thieving savior. A wound I never noticed. Made from the iron poker and mimicking yet another stigma. Perhaps God mocks in my favor.
I speak with even more fervor. "The people die, Serpent. Those that have taken God's graces are lifted--"
"What are you?"
"--and the damned fall away to the shadows of the land of weeping and gnashing teeth."
"Don't come forward!"
"The damned have been marked like me--"
"Back to the fires, you corpse!" The sword raises and points again.
"Strike at me, I beg you! Every lash you'll be repaid!" One points to my bare back as I lift my arms to the fires behind me. The villagers that aren't dead have long fled.
"His skin! He's marked!"
I turn to look at them again, moving the palms of my hands over my face, spreading the blood over me like a veil. "Yes, my demon skin reveals me. I've been plagued with the sickness that will bring us to end times! The first seal is broken and the first trumpet sounded. Those who have touched the skin of Legion will hear it, too." I stretch my arms to them and flaunt my palms dripping red. A few look at their hands and a few look to their savior to absolve them. They don't want to earn their redemption, they want it given like all else they have. Though now it may be too late. The coughing will start tomorrow.
The Son of Lilith drops his sword. "Don't touch it," he says to them.
I raise my arms and try not to be bothered by the stretched wound in my side. If I wince I give it away. "You've already opened the Gates of Hell. Look closely, and watch my brothers parade their ranks." One or two point behind me, letting my lies blind them. A large section of the roof falls away just in time.
The Serpent slithers his horse back a few steps and begins to turn. "Follow," he says to his followers. "But not close. Let them flee. We need shelter." I don't close my eyes but the world turns dark as they gallop away. I've lost too much blood. The snow falls thicker and turns to rain. I look to a street that seeps with the refugees of the raid.
"You don't live here. Who are you? Why did you help us?" queried an older man.
"I didn't have the strength to fight, so I outwitted them instead. The poor are superstitious to the things they can't understand. Sorry."
He smiles. That much I see before my knees grow soft and fall to the illness. And for a little while at least, I can rest without pain.
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