Felix had no desire to cross Lorenzo and his men again. He would need to leave before dark.
Felix slid from the bed and donned his armor. He moved to the window and peered down to the courtyard. At the base of the tower was the stable, a simple wooden structure with a slanted roof leaning against the interior castle wall. That''s where he would find his horse.
As Felix stepped into the courtyard he inspected Schloss Reichter. It was sparsely inhabited. Felix suspected no more than a handful of men at arms for the entire castle, and just a few servants. For a castle this remote, that may be plenty to defend it. Sieging a castle is rarely a test of raw strength, but of planning—can the attacker’s logistics outperform the defender’s preparation. Moving an army and supplies this far into the Alps would be difficult, and winter wouldn’t permit a long campaign. That’s why men journeyed up to mountain tops—to stack rocks and call themselves a lord.
It was Ollie that recognized Felix first. He was in the stable, pouring feed from a sack into a shallow trough for Castigar, his horse. Beside the horse were four plump cows. Most would no doubt be killed before winter, then salted and stored. Keeping animals of that size alive between harvests would be too costly, and the people of Schloss Reichter would be happy to have the meat.
“Did Haddie patch you up?” said Ollie. He sat the sack down and retrieved a crutch that was lying against the wall, then hobbled over to Felix.
“Aye,” said Felix.
Felix walked briskly and Ollie did his best to keep up.
“And my lord? Have you rid him of his demons?”
Felix approached his horse and began adjusting the saddle.
“Haddie says she has it under control.”
Ollie looked down at his shoes, one foot slightly held aloft. “That’s why I asked for your help.”
Felix blinked his eyes as he listened to Ollie, trying to focus. He felt as if he had too much wine. But that was not possible. Felix had not had a drop since Tabor’s.
Ollie lifted his hand to the side of his mouth, to hide his words, and he whispered, “I think Haddie is in league with the demon, or summoned it herself... Sir," said Ollie, nervously. "Please... don''t leave. My lord needs you." Ollie’s face twisted in desperation. "He''s worse than before. He speaks of demons and serpents—things I''ve never heard from him before. Please. He always said men like you are closer to God. If anyone can save him, it''s you."
Felix frowned. Closer to God. The words grated. He muttered a curse under his breath, adjusted his belt, and nodded. There was still daylight, time enough to fulfill his word. He shook his head, driving everything back into focus. “Very well, where is your lord?”
“His chambers are in the keep. There, in the center of the castle.”
Felix nodded, then strode off towards the central tower, marching through the courtyard. The dizziness worsened, and a faint buzzing started in his skull, but he did his best to choke it down. The men on the walls seemed unconcerned, and continued their patrol.
The keep opened into a large banquet hall. Long tables, bare of plates or candlesticks, lined the room. Large iron crown-shaped coronas hung from the ceiling, and long tendrils of melted wax leaked from them, frozen in time. What grand events must have occurred here when this castle was new? But now, like the rest of the castle and its aging guards, this room had been forgotten.
Felix passed through the hall and came to a large chamber door. It looked to be the right place. Felix braced himself. He had no crucifix, no Bible, no symbols of the Pope’s authority. He would have to reason with this demon—if it be a demon—as a man.
Tossing aside the heavy door, Felix entered with all the confidence and authority of Saint Benedict himself. The room was oversized and stately. Large rooms were hard to heat, and reserved only for those wealthy enough to afford the labor to cut the required firewood. A bed, complete with four large posts and draped in fine cloth dyed black, sat in the center of the room. Felix approached and tore the drapes to the side. Lord Siegfried Von Reichtor was not in it.
A hand erupted from beneath the bed and grasped Felix’s ankle. Felix recoiled immediately, but it held fast. Then it pulled him under.
“Shhh…” said the creature. It held a single finger up to its mouth.
The thing in the darkness—skinny, pale, with large dark eyes and long fingernails pointed up. “Secrets are sharper than swords…” it croaked.
Felix found himself beneath the bed, cast in shadow, laying beside the mad, possibly possessed, Lord Siegfried Von Reichter.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
“What secrets?” asked Felix.
“Honey that’s sweeter than lies. You have the stick of the queen bee on you.”
Felix shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
"You think I’m mad," Reichter hissed, his fingers digging into Felix’s arm. "But they left something behind, something terrible. I suckled on the serpent. They made me do it. And now all I can see is men crashing over the world on their chariots. They left it behind for us to find. The serpent. The white serpent. It infects us.”
“You know of the serpent?”
The wrinkled man reeked of urine. His hair was wild and gray. His eyes, seemingly bulging from his head, glistened with fear, but also with sincerity. What he said, he believed.
“It knows I know,” he whispered, the words trembling with desperation. “It crawls beneath the skin, twists the mind. It whispers... oh, how it whispers.” The man’s arm stretched out and reached for something on the bed, then drew down a pillow. “Look, do you see?”
Felix felt his world continue to grow dizzy. He looked at the pillow, and the patterns seemed to move on their own, like passing fence posts along a road. Rainbows poured out from the sides of the object. The man’s face began to stretch and distort grotesquely, melting away like warm tallow.
“What’s happening to me?” asked Felix.
“We’re fucked up,” said Lord Reichter in a burst of laughter.
Felix began shaking his head, trying his best to focus. His vision swam and his head felt like it had left its body, floating to some otherworldly, euphoric place.
Lord Reichter grabbed Felix by the face and covered his mouth with a filthy hand. Then he looked directly ahead from beneath the bed.
Felix and Lord Reichter watched Haddie enter the chamber. She carried with her a silver serving tray. On it was bread, water, and her special, infused honey. She held a knife. Felix and Lord Reichter’s eyes widened in fear and they held their breath, muffling their giggles. Looking to either side, she dipped it in the honey and spread it on the bread.
That must be it, thought Felix. She uses poisoned honey to drive men to madness and rules the castle, leaving its rightful lord a drooling, gibbering fool.
Their eyes traced her footsteps as she approached the bed, knife in hand. Felix felt a shock of fear crawl down his back. She stood there for a moment, but did not look down.
After she left, Lord Reichter let go of Felix and rolled onto his back, gulping down a sigh of relief. Then he mumbled, “Honey witch, honey witch, honey witch, that she be free is my only wish.”
Felix began laughing hysterically. Lord Reichter joined him.
“I have to go,” giggled Felix.
Lord Reichter’s eyes rolled in his head, and he continued laughing. His form seemed to phase in and out of reality, riding an iridescent rainbow.
“Don’t eat the bread,” slurred Felix, suppressing his laughter.
“Don’t eat the bread. Don’t go to bed. Don’t do what I said…” Lord Reichter cackled.
Felix crawled from beneath the bed and tried to stand, but immediately fell back to the floor. His knees did not seem keen on cooperating.
Lord Reichter called out from beneath the bed as Felix stumbled away. “You’ll see. You’ll see. Don’t suckle the serpent. Don’t submit to the serpentine.”
Ignoring the old man’s ravings, Felix was able to rise, barely, and exiting the chambers, slumped against the stone walls of the keep, and slid down the corridor. His mouth was wide open, drooling, and his pupils were the size of saucers. As he went, he clumsily batted away tapestries and knocked over candelabras that blocked his path along the stone wall.
After stumbling out to the courtyard, he made it back to the west tower.
It was dark now.
Felix did not know how long it took him to get from the keep to the tower. What felt like seconds must have taken hours. The haunted west tower did not receive the attention of the servants, and the candles were not lit, leaving the entire building in blinding darkness.
Felix shut the door and leaned against it, breathing hard. He glanced at the plate of bread and honey left by Haddie earlier. Gripping it, he hurled it across the room, sending crumbs scattering across the floor. The empty jar of honey rolled to a stop at his feet.
Picking it up, he sniffed its rim and recoiled. Beneath the sweetness, an herbal aroma lingered, sharp, sweet, and medicinal.
Felix collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The cobblestones seemed to grow and shrink as the castle breathed in and out.
Looking to a dark corner, Felix saw what appeared first as a shadow and then a silhouette. In the dark a man took shape. He was tall, naked, and his skin was jet-black. At the top of his neck was the unmistakable head of a goat. Was it a ghost?
“Caesar, can you say something?” mumbled Felix.
Caesar, in its lithe goat-man form, emerged from the shadows and walked slowly, silently from the corner of the room, save the soft tap of his bare feet on the stone floor. Then stood over Felix.
“Rest. You must recover your strength,” said Caesar. Its voice was deep and smooth, with an eerie, ethereal resonance reserved only for the domain of demons.
“I knew it…” said Felix proudly, his eyes closed, suppressing a laugh.
Caesar arched its back and looked out the window, a beam of moonlight striking its yellow eyes.
Felix swallowed, his voice hoarse. "What are you?"
"Nothing," Caesar replied.
Felix spoke to the ceiling, forced to close his eyes to avoid motion sickness from a world bobbing side to side and expanding in and out. "What does God ask of me?"
"You can fit all I care for God in a thimble. You can fight, or you can be food for the worms."
“Worms?”
“The old word for serpent is wurm,” said Caesar, calmly. “The serpent is not a dragon, it is a worm.”
The goat-man, crowned in spiraling horns, looked down to Felix, who was nodding his head side to side, fading from consciousness.
“Sleep now, Hexenjager, for you have many more tests to take.”