The dungeon beneath the palace reeked of damp stone, mold, and the cries of despair. The air was heavy, suffocating, with the faint metallic tang of blood lingering on its slick surfaces. Felix’s boots scuffed against the uneven floor as the guards dragged him by his armpits deeper into the cold—his wrists bound tightly with iron chains.
Ruprecht led the way, torch in hand. “Canis Dei,” he said, his voice echoing in the tight space of the dungeon corridor, “let’s see how loud this hound can howl.”
They stopped before a massive door reinforced with iron bars. One of the guards produced a heavy key and unlocked it with a resonant clang. The door groaned open, revealing a dark chamber. Instruments of torture sat on a table and lined the walls—racks, pincers, tongs, and hooks—each one designed to reduce flesh and bone to pliant obedience.
Felix was shoved forward, the impact driving him to his knees on the cold stone floor. The guards yanked at his armor straps, stripping him of his clothes and his boots, leaving him naked. Then they hooked the shackles on his wrists to a chain dangling from above and lifted him off the floor.
“Leave us,” Ruprecht ordered, placing his torch on the wall. The guards hesitated for only a moment before obeying. The iron door slammed shut behind them, sealing Felix alone with the mad Bohemian.
Ruprecht held up a hand and cupped Felix’s chin. “It is good to finally meet you in the flesh.” He picked up a thin blade from the table, its edge gleaming in the torchlight. “While you still have flesh.”
Ruprecht toyed with the knife between his fingers, and peered into Felix’s eyes, looking for something—fear. But it did not come. It displeased him greatly. “You will answer my questions. And when you do, your suffering will be over. Perhaps even mercifully.”
Ruprecht began methodically pressing the blade’s tip against Felix’s side, drawing a line of shallow blood. “Where is my weapon?”
Felix said nothing, his eyes locked straight ahead.
Ruprecht’s expression soured, his thin lips curled into a scowl. He began twisting the knife into Felix’s side. “The church sent you after something. What is it?”
Felix, again, did not speak.
The blade dug deeper, and Ruprecht’s patience wore thin. “You think your faith will save you? Let us test its strength.”
Ruprecht turned to inspect the tools of torture provided to him—an arsenal of pain. “The hot poker? Thumb screws? Or maybe,” Ruprecht forcefully yanked on the chain, nearly dislocating Felix’s shoulder, “I leave you here to bleed.”
“Your commander is dead. Your coalition is lost. You cannot win,” said Felix. “What are you planning?”
Ruprecht laughed like a viper, a raspy sibilant sound. “You think me Hussite? Jan Hus was a reformer. He sought to reforge the Church. Not me. I wish to break it.”
Felix watched the man as he paced the table.
“Hus knew the power of the Eucharist. Your Church condemned him to die in a whirlwind of fire at the stake and the kindling was his own handwritten works. It’s a shame I’ll never know what he wrote in those pages, what ancient truth he uncovered that drove him to tear down a thousand years of ecclesiastical doctrine. All I know for certain is that he called it The Light.”
“The Light…” Felix murmured.
“You know it?” Ruprecht did not look shocked. “It is your mission, is it not? And where did you say you were going? Normandy?” He cracked a sliver of a smile, his teeth revealing like a crescent moon. “With its magic, and my engineering, we will remake the world, Felix. We will usher in a new golden age.” He licked his lips. “There will be no God, and we will worship ourselves and become Einherjar—immortal warriors blessed by Valkyrie. We have already sowed the seeds, and when ripe, we will pluck humanity like fruit from the World Tree.”
“And those who refuse?”
“Rendered asunder by my cannons.” Ruprecht began pacing again. “Do you know why the knightly class rules Europe? They did not always. In the power vacuum of Rome’s fall, farmers banded together and paid strong men to protect them. Then, after a generation or two, the strong men thought themselves the rulers, and crowned themselves. But with The Light, armed with my weapons, all men will be the strong—all men will be kings.”
“Men you choose.”
Ruprecht allowed a slit of a grin. “Naturally. We Germans thought burning Rome would end its control over us, but we were mistaken. Now Rome is the Church, and all of Europe still lives under its thumb. This relic will expose you, all of you, and empower us to free mankind from its rule. It will be an enlightened age. An age of the serpentine.”
Felix knew the word. Serpentine was the name for the melange of different elements that created the explosive reaction in the barrels of their canons, sending stone and shot through armor, flesh, and bone.
“And how will you do that with French and English in your way?”
Repurecht unleashed another raspy laugh. “I am allied with the English and the French. You know nothing of the state of this war, DeWinter. Everyone is begging to know the outcome, but the result is certain. Guns, my weapons, will decide the future. Ragnarok is coming, and I am its maker. We will rule the new battlefield, the whole world, tearing down idols from a distance.”
“A spear gives courage. A longer spear even more so. But when men build spears so long they cannot see who they are killing, it becomes arrogance, and then it is the knives that come for you.”
“A philosopher, I see.”
“The English, perhaps, but the French will not abide you. There is no honor in it.”
“Do I tell you my plans now? Or do I cut your tongue out first so that you may never speak of it? It hardly matters, you will not leave this place. I have courted the Marshal of all of France, Gilles de Rais.”
A loud metallic bang rang out from the door. Men were shouting just behind it.
Ruprecht left Felix dangling helplessly and unlatched the door. The guards had returned with orders from the Castilian. Felix was not to be killed yet, not before the torturers could arrive and extract the information he wanted on his war with the Pope.Stolen story; please report.
As they argued, Felix looked above him. The chain was drawn through a metal ring in the ceiling. Over time, the stone had worn with the sweat of encroaching water, crumbling around the nail that held it. They had built a palace on the surface, but down here it was still ancient Roman stone. Felix flipped upside down and braced his bare feet on the ceiling, and began to pull.
Ruprecht was the first to notice. “Stop him!”
Felix strained with all his might, his muscles tensing and his teeth clenched. Then he felt it loosen, and the stone gave way at the bracket, and he was cast to the cold stone floor with a meaty thud.
Two men rushed towards him and Felix scrambled to his feet. His wrists still bound in iron shackles, he grabbed the chain and whirled it around his wrist, then sent out a loop that caught the closest man by the neck. Pulling him close he lashed out with a heavy kick that knocked the other man prone.
Felix pulled the man against him, the chain taught against the man’s throat. He tightened it until there was a snap and the man went limp, dropping to the floor.
Ruprecht brandished his knife, a realization washing across his face. “You meant to be caught…”
Felix allowed himself a smirk. “And now I know thy face.”
Deftly dodging Ruprecht’s knife, Felix brought down his bound hands on Ruprecht’s head, hitting him with the edge of the shackles and carving a gash in his forehead, knocking him cold.
Felix didn’t have much time. He could hear the shuffle of guards mustering deeper down the corridor.
Naked as the day he was born and bleeding, Felix dashed out and up the stone stairs. The dungeon’s layout was a maze, but Felix’s memory served him well. He retraced his steps. His bare feet were silent against the stone, his ragged breath muffled by the cries of other prisoners echoing through the halls.
He could hear yelling behind him. He would not outpace the prison guards. And there was nowhere to flee. The dungeon fed directly back into the great hall, where he would be surrounded. He paused momentarily to think.
“Fuck it,” said Felix.
Corrado sat in his chair conversing with his council. They spoke of military campaigns and arming the condottieri, veterans of the Italian Wars, to use against the Papacy.
Then they went quiet.
A naked, shackled Felix was standing at the center of their court.
“Wha—seize him!” cried Corrado.
Felix sprinted towards his throne, and kicked him in the face. Unaccustomed to receiving the violence he so often afflicted on others, Corrado gripped his broken royal nose and tears streamed down his cheeks, pouting like a baby.
Felix planted a foot on the back of the throne, and leapt directly up, catching his shackles on an unlit sconce. Then he scrambled up to the source of flowing water.
Felix knew that during the plague, the Roman aqueducts were redirected. Kings and nobles would receive their own unpolluted water directly into their keeps, to save themselves from mingling with the corrupted water of the commoners. It was his way out.
The priests and magistrates reached up in a swarm and clawed at his feet with grasping hands, trying to tear him down. But a few swift kicks knocked them onto their perfect robes, their jewelry jingling as they hit the floor. Then he swung to where a steady stream of fresh water poured into the fountains of the keep, a fount so small that only in the nude could he squeeze through, and he slipped inside.
Felix thought of the irony that one leaky roof in an ancient church, collected in a bucket, had spawned a thousand years of belief that water could be holy. And now their hubris, surrounding themselves with flowing cisterns to wash themselves of sin, would be his salvation.
He scrambled as best he could through the water. It was cold. The water came up to his chest, flowing against him, choking him. The aqueduct channel was just large enough to accommodate his size on bent knees. He reached out in the darkness, navigating with his hands, until he could feel the stone change in texture and knew he had reached the much older, larger Roman aqueduct. Then he followed it towards freedom.
A beam of moonlight spilled from a crack in the stone wall ahead, cutting through the darkness like a guillotine. He raced for it, fighting the current with his last bit of strength. The stones here were old, crumbling. Pressing his weight against the wall, he pushed the loose masonry free, making just enough room to fit, the cool air of the night rushed into the dark, cramped tunnel. He could not hear the stones fall on the other side, and he thought to look down first—to measure the distance of the fall. But he didn’t hesitate.
He jumped.
Felix landed in the mud on his back. He was outside the walls of Foligno. He lay there for a moment, staring up at the stars, catching his breath. Water trickled from above onto his forehead like a second baptism.
He rose to his feet, dripping, naked, and exhausted, only to find himself face to face with two Foligno guards. They were armored with their weapons at the ready. He did not have the energy to fight these men. His escape was for naught.
The men laughed at his nude state and pointed. “Damn Benandanti,” one chuckled disapprovingly.
“Get out of here,” said the other.
Felix nodded, grateful for their mistake, and fled into the cold night. Maybe luck was only late to find him.
Caesar was standing watch at Tabor’s house, and bleated with excitement as Felix arrived, tired and sore.
Tabor emerged from the home, an expression of relief washed over him. “You look like hell.”
“I’ve been worse.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Aye.”
“And naked.”
Felix waved away Tabor’s insightful observations. “The Marshal of France plans to acquire Ruprecht’s guns,” said Felix. “They will flood all of Europe with his weapons, and the balance of power will shift.”
“Alarming, if true,” replied Tabor in jest. “Gilles de Rais is the Marshal of France.”
“Aye,” said Felix.
“He worships the snake, too. The child eating serpent of Milan.”
Felix shook his head at the notion in disbelief.
“They may return. And if they don’t, Ruprecht may make his way to Normandy, and I must beat him there.”
“Well, at least take some clothes, first,” chuckled Tabor. “And let me help you out of those chains.”
Tabor brought Felix into the home to warm up by his hearth. He handed him a fresh undershirt and some black breeches. Then, he worked a hammer and chisel to break the shackles. With one final strike, they fell onto the table with a clatter.
“Here,” said Tabor, “take this armor. It does me no good.” Tabor retrieved the white hemp armor and tossed it to Felix.
The armor was impressive, but Felix had his doubts. It was a cream color, only nearly white, and pocked with silver studs. It was light, much lighter than he anticipated, and just as flexible as his old leather.
“I’m sorry,” said Tabor, “but I’m afraid I have no spare boots. You can have mine, but they’ll be quite big for you.”
“A man of your size has enough hardships finding a cobbler willing to spare the material. Keep them. This is more than enough.”
After helping him fix the straps, Tabor handed the belt back, and Felix latched it to his waist. “Thank you, friend. I’m sorry I brought this upon your house.”
Tabor waved the notion away with a thick hand. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be moving my harvest north, maybe I will see you again soon.”
The men held a brawny embrace, as soldiers do.
Tabor stood tall. “You are wise, you are justified, and you are ancient,” said Tabor.
They were the old words. The Norman words. An epithet for the Allfather. It was heresy to speak them.
“You are wise, you are justified, and you are ancient, my friend.” Felix smiled. Heresy be damned.
Felix leapt on to his horse. And then he rode. In his white armor, he disappeared like a shooting star through the night.
With unnatural speed, the goat chased close behind, bringing with it a darkness that followed them both.
A darkness that would not be denied.