Simon: Time Displaced Knight - Part Two

This week I managed to stick to my own arbitrary date for putting stuff up. Nobody is going to hurt me for missing a deadline I set myself, but that's half the problem, having a deadline and sticking to it is what will motivate me to get to the end of this.
anyway, enjoy part two...
PART ONE HERE

2.

There is a period, of indeterminate length, of which I was completely unaware, having been rendered unconscious somehow.  My dreaming mind ran through recent events in a jumbled, confused fashion.  I remembered my chase across the dusty plain, but the men I unhorsed were now both my brother, and the Great Khan spoke with the voice of Father Anjou, the town priest, reciting canticles in latin as his horde bore down on me.

When I finally regained consciousness, I found myself in a room, small and windowless, like some form of dungeon, though the walls were made of smooth steel, with no joins or rivets, and no door presented itself. The ceiling hung low, so that I could sit up from my prone position, but had no chance of standing upright.  I was still wearing my armour and surcoat, and my wargear was on my person, though the shield I had flung away in the chase was presumably lost. Finnegan was not with me.

I began to bang on the walls, searching for an exit, or hoping to attract attention from outside.  Before long I was pounding with all my might, and shrieking myself hoarse, crying to be let free, for my gaolers to advance and be recognized.  But there was no sign of life, no sounds beyond those I made.

I did discover however, that one of the walls was not truly made of steel as it had appeared.  When I struck it with my gauntlet, instead of the ringing clang of the other, metal, walls, there was only a dull thud.  Upon removing my helm and inspecting more closely I saw there appeared to be a sheet of glass directly in front of the wall.  At least, glass I assumed it must be, but more perfect and precise than anything I had seen a glazier make back home by several orders of magnitude.

What follows here is the telling of my first experiences as what you might call a ‘chrononaut,’ or ‘time traveler’.  If you are reading this then you will know the significance of events heretofore described in ways which I did not understand as they occurred to me.    This will continue to be the case.  As our tale progresses I will behold many objects, events and locations which will seem commonplace to you future dwellers, but to a French Knight Errant plucked from his time these things are not just unknown, but so far beyond my ken as to be totally unfathomable and indescribable.  For the sake of expedience I may furnish my descriptions of characters, objects and events with more detail and background knowledge than I possessed at the time.

For example, the metal prison I found myself in was one of seventy five Reclamation Capsules, used for storing valuable cargo either recovered from space or salvaged from wrecked starships and space stations.  These capsules were contained in the hold of Harvester 110010110010001111, a vessel belonging to The Machine Imperium.  Harvester 110010110010001111 was currently entering orbit around Meat, a planet covered by a vast, densely populated jungle, and the centre of bushmeat hunting and export through this corner of the galaxy as well as the home of a number of rich, but dangerous to exploit, mineral reserves. When a stable orbit was achieved, the Harvester released the seventy five capsules from its armoured belly, like a shark, birthing live young into a cruel, cold ocean.  The metal boxes drifted downwards in formation, friction with the atmosphere of the planet causing their undersides to glow red, then orange, and finally blinding white with the heat of re-entry.

I, contained within one of these boxes and perfectly safe in the computer controlled descent, cowered in the corner, as terrified as a base creature caught out in a thunderstorm.  The metal wall behind the glass was of course, the interior of the spaceship, and had seemed to lift away as my capsule was dropped, revealing the emptiness of the void and the sight of a planet from orbit to my unprepared mind.

So then, that was my first experience of the new world I found myself in, the far future, more than 1000 years hence from my own time, and for some while yet in our tale, set to be a total mystery to me in all but it’s most basic aspects. Though at least my arrival on the planet Meat would put me in a situation that had an equivalent in the past and a dynamic I could comprehend.

Slavery.

Upon landing, coming to rest relatively gently on a cushion of air, my capsule sat for a moment, before opening outwards in sections, much like the petals of a flower.  Leaving me sat, to my shame, in soiled armour, upon a flat surface of metal. 

The area around me had once been dense forest, but the trees had been felled at some point over an area of around a square mile, their trunks stacked in great heaps here and there, and the stumps ripped up, leaving potholes filled in with fresh earth.  It gave the appearance of an area beset with monstrous moles digging as they pleased.  What it was, of course was a landing zone for the capsules, which delivered supplies to forces on the ground.  Those supplies, for the most part, were slaves.

There were fifty of us, or thereabouts, scattered about the clearing, along with two dozen stacks of metal boxes and devices, the purpose of which were unknown to me and remain so. We began to rise uncertainly, me most of all, staggering drunkenly, foul liquid leaking from beneath my plates. 

No sooner had I gained my feet than I had the first glimpse of my captors, a wonder it is that my mind did not break once and for all at their arrival.  They were all of a height, and as they emerged from the trees my first thought, on seeing the gleaming metal and uniform step as they marched forward, was what a finely drilled company of men that is, but as they advanced on us and I saw them more clearly and registered their oddity.  They were, to a man, seven feet tall, with limbs of freakish slimness, so it appeared they should not be able to support their bodies, or hold their weapons, arrangements of long metal tubes which they held as I might have wielded a crossbow.  One of my fellows ran at the sight of them and was met with a bright, concentrated beam of lightning, which seemed to emit from the ‘crossbow’ of one of the armoured warriors, and envelop the fleeing person, a woman I believe, who felt dead and burned to a cinder no less than twenty paces from me. 

I started at this immense display of power but before I had time to fully react, a great, booming voice filled the clearing.  I didn’t understand the language, but it seemed to me that the voice was saying the same phrase, over and over in many different tongues.  As the monstrous company approached, I saw more of them coming from the trees behind and to either side of me, no hope of escape. Then suddenly I could understand the voice.

“Puny humans.  You are now the property of the Machine Imperium.  Do not resist.  Non-compliant humans will be obliterated.  Assemble now for decontamination.  Obey without question.” The voice was speaking French, many of the words were strange to me, but I could understand the greater part.

We were herded into a huddled mass, shivering despite the intense humidity and commanded to remove our clothes. I looked up at the ironclad beings surrounding us and knew at last these were no men.  Their metal skins were seamless with no sign of how they could be removed.  The head of each one was occupied with one great eye, which glowed with a deep red light and as they moved they all emitted strange rapid clicking ticking sounds constantly, later I learned that this was their own language.  They communicated extensively to such an extent that they appeared to act and think as one.  The words ‘machine imperium’ repeated themselves in my head, was it possible these were some sort of manufactured man?  Mechanical constructs of gears and levers contained in a shell so much like my suit of armour.

I could not remove my armour unaided, normally a squire would assist me, so I struggled uselessly with it as the other captives stood, trying in vain to cover their nakedness as one of the machines waved a device like an incense thurible over their bodies, the decontaminator. When that was finished another machine threw each captive a plain grey garment, much like a shift or tunic which hung down to the knees and a pair of pair of box-like shoes of the same colour, which shrank to fit the wearer’s feet.  One of the machines stepped up to me, barking a phrase in several tongues until he came to that odd French,

“Remove you coverings and prepare for decontamination. Do not resist.”

“I cannot!” I cried desperately “I cannot remove my armour alone.”  The machine looked me up and down before speaking again,

“Scanning…This human’s covering contains low-background steel.  Radioisotopes nonexistent.  This material will be of use to the Imperium.  This human will be decontaminated unaltered.”

The machine man with the decontaminator waved it over me.  I felt nothing, but afterwards when I examined myself I saw that all the dirt and grime accrued during my journey and subsequent ordeals was gone.

Threatening constantly with their weapons, the machines directed us lift the crates, boxes and other items that had come down in the unoccupied capsules.  I took one end of a long, wooden crate over my shoulder, the other end was carried by a woman with short black hair, I was too wrapped up in my own fear and misery to notice much else about her.  She said something to me as she took the weight but I didn’t understand, I tried to say so in french but I think my meaning was also lost on her.  In time, when we were all assembled and carrying our loads, the machines lead us away from the clearing and into the jungle.

The march progressed for at least 20 days, though I lost the exact count somewhere along the way.  Each day on the march progressed according to a set routine. We slept where we had dropped after the previous day, on the bare floor with the mud and countless crawling, scurrying creatures of the jungle.  The jungle, as I’ve since learned, covered almost the entire world, from dense bushland, thick with undergrowth and ten thousand different creatures which crawled and hopped and flew, to the vast mangrove glades which encroached on the many rivers, to the mighty floating jungles of kelp and seaweed which dominated the entire expanse of Meat’s single ocean.  Animal life was rampant everywhere, though the larger animals were often heard but rarely seen, smaller creatures often scurried about us, as if curious.  Particularly persistent were a flock of small lizards, much like the kind to be found basking on rocks in the Mediterranean.  These however, ran on two legs, in a similar stance to a chicken, and were often to be found scurrying under my feet. In time I came to ignore them as they blended into the routine of the day.  We were woken by the bellowing of one of the machines, exhorting us ‘puny humans’ to our labours, with the constant threat of violent, fiery death for those who failed in their task or tried to escape.  As we prepared to set out we were issued with a cube of some foul tasting black jelly substance to eat.  It made me sick to my stomach at first, but kept me and the others alive, just.  Then there remained 12 hours or so of daylight, during which we marched, carrying our loads with a torturous, shuffling step, before stopping to eat another block of gelatinous horror.  It rained almost hourly, and this we drank, tipping our heads back with mouths agape.

My world reduced to the area just in front of my feet, as I focused the sum total of my will on simply placing one boot in front of the other.  Within a few hours on the first day a man had fallen, and when he could not rise after three attempts, the machines executed him, leaving the body where it lay.  By the time I passed his corpse it was already thick with a covering of flies and beetles, feasting.  I kept that image in my mind whenever I considered stopping. 

Nor did I think to try and fight my way out, as much as it stuck in my craw.  The machines had left me, alone amongst the captives, with my clothes, and with it my sword.  It in no way resembled their weapons, and so perhaps they did not recognize it as such, but neither did I see how I could hope to harm the metal men with such a weapon, nor how I could hope to even get close enough to try, lest I be cooked alive by one of their lightning guns.

A knight must be brave, and defiant to the last, giving his all to protect the innocent, but in those black days I was no knight, merely an armoured, craven boy, concerned only with my own survival while all around me, folk died of exhaustion, or were callously slain.

I did form one alliance on the march, the woman who shared my load.  Though I had studiously avoided her gaze at first, I came to realise it was in my interest to help her through the ordeal along with me, lest I should have twice the load to carry if she fell, I wagered that she saw things similarly and so, on the third day, as we trudged down a gentle slope and the going was slightly easier, I began my attempts to communicate.  Our captors seemed not to care if we spoke to each other, as long as we continued to make progress, so I tried simply speaking at first in my own tongue.  This she did not understand, so I tried the two other tongues I had any knowledge of, English (what you would call Middle English) and lastly, the few words I had of latin, which I had learned from the monastic scribes who lived near to father’s castle.  At this her head whirled around, an expression of surprise and some delight spread broadly across her face and she responded in the same tongue.  At last!

It took hours, days even, of pointing at things and repeating the woman’s name for them, but I set myself to learning, so I might have some hope of understanding where I was, what was happening to me, and what we could do next.  The first thing I discovered was my ally’s name, Charon, Captain Mira Charon. 

She was a woman of some fierce intelligence, I recognized that in her eyes at once.  Her features and build did not ascribe to the conventional standards of beauty as I knew them, yet the confidence and wit within her was magnetic, her wry, knowing smile infectious, even in the fix we found ourselves in.  It felt good to be doing something positive finally, though we never dared to speak openly of escape, she managed to hint to me that she had a plan, that I must be patient.

New York City – 1929

The man opened the window of his office on the twentieth floor and stepped out onto the thin, brick ledge outside, which ran the circumference of the building. As he did he felt the panic and stress that had gripped his heart in a vice for the last week release him and a kind of serenity descend. Everything was so simple now, no more checking the paper for share prices, or raging on the telephone at brokers. No more migraines or palpitations, just a brief sensation of floating, then nothing.  His only regret was not spending more time with his family, instead of chasing those dollar bills all these years, but it was too late to change that now, and he could barely look at his wife and daughter now, knowing he had impoverished them with his avarice.  No, better to go now and free those poor angels of the wretched millstone they called husband and father.

He had one foot off the balcony and was just at the very edge of letting go when a series of crashes, like a silver service dropped down an elevator shaft, followed by coarse, Texan, cursing.

“Do you mind pal?!” he roared into the open window, some of his trading floor pluck returning for a moment, “I am trying to have a moment here!”

“Well shitfire!” replied the Texan, from around the corridor outside the office, “Ah have not the faintest clue where’n the Sam Hill Ah have ended up, but the décor sure is fancy! Hey, what in tarnation are ya doin’ out there?”

A horse had walked into the office. Light brown in colour, with a saddle on his back and reins hanging down from his bridle, and one of those all-round skirt things knights put on their horses in olden day, the man didn’t know the name for it.  It seemed to be the one doing the talking. 

“Woah! Yer not thinkin’ of tossin’ yerself off that are ya?” the horse said, taking a few steps back in astonishment.  He gathered himself, as if trying to remember a phrase he’d once heard. “Think of all that you have got to live for.” He said, looking proud.

The man slowly climbed back into the room, as he got down from the window the couple of bystanders who had gathered on the street below dispersed, disappointed. 

“Thas the spirit!” said the horse, “what’s yer name boss?”

“What?…er…Bailey, Mick Bailey,” the man said distractedly, approaching the horse. “My cousin owns a circus you know?”

“Bully for you!  Ah heard the circus is a hog-killin’ time and no mistake, but Ah need yer help, boss.  Ah got myself in a fine situation and Ah’m a little at sea as to where Ah am now.”

“Sure…sure thing boy,” said the man, edging as close as he dared thinking the horse might bolt or something.  He had no idea how this trick was achieved, but there was money to be made here, maybe enough to resurrect his sunken fiscal fortunes.  He reached for the bridle.

Finnegan saw the sudden movement and, on instinct, reared up as much as the low ceiling would allow.  He kicked out with both his front hooves and struck Mick Bailey squarely on the chest.  The force of the blow broke three ribs and collapsed a lung, and flung the destitute banker backwards out of his open office window.

“That’ll learn ya, tryin’ to apprehend a fella going about his honest business.” Finnegan yelled out the window, sticking his head right out to look at the street below.  People on the sidewalk pointed with equal parts amazement and horror at the corpse on the ground and the animal twenty floors up.

When police officers finally broke into the locked office, bailiffs dispatched by Bailey’s creditors on their heels, they found nothing untoward and no sign of a horse, as if such a thing was possible! How would it have even got into the elevator?

One officer thought he had seen an odd blue light beaming from under the door before they had entered, but he was a known alcoholic and was ignored.

Parliament of the Atlantic

Picture from Wikipedia

Bit of a delay getting this one out, my first instance of writers block since starting this. But I'm quite pleased with this daft story inspired by information passed on to me by my sister, Rebecca Lindsay,, zoology student of note. Thanks to her for checking my science and to Joseph Crouch for suggesting a tweak to the ending.
I think I'm going to do another chapter of Simon: Time Displaced Knight next week, but I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment. 

Anyway, please enjoy

Parliament of the Atlantic

Professor Barley had placed the subject in a tank about 4 feet square, which she had filled with water and placed on the deck of the Stoneking.  It was heavy enough to remain immobile as the ship, a former fishing trawler and now the Professor’s personal floating fiefdom, rolled in the mid-atlantic swell, gentle by the standards of the great ocean, but strong enough to send unsecured items, belonging to me and the other six interns rolling merrily around below decks, creating minor chaos.  At the top of the tank, a glass lid weighing approximately five kilos blocked the open top pretty much completely, except for a metal bar, wedged between the tank and the lid, with its end in the water. 

The object of this exercise was to observe the animal within the tank attempt to escape.  Professor Barley had wanted to extract a wager from one of us on the likelihood of that happening, though no one would take the bet, it looked very unlikely to us, but nobody was smart enough to bet against the Professor anymore.

The animal in the tank was currently languishing grumpily at the very bottom, lying flat against the glass, her skin flushed a sulky red, perhaps in protest at her confinement, rough handling, and the various containers she had been sloshed in and out of since blundering into one of our nets.  I walked over the deck to peer closely at the thing while she was still relatively still.  I wanted a good look at her skin if she decided to change colour, but mostly I found myself staring into her great big beautiful eyes.  They were filled with a life I hadn’t totally expected.  I’d been studying marine life at Miskatonic for the last three years to get my degree, and now I was filling up the summer before starting my masters with this internship.  In that time I had noticed the live specimens I had studied fell into two distinct categories, the blank stares of cute, dumb, little fish.  Or the blank stares of utterly terrifying ‘stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back’ type things that would bite you just to find out if you were worth eating. This was different, the octopus didn’t stare blankly at all, she looked at me, her eye moving around slightly as she took in the details of my form, my face, the sunglasses resting atop my head and my hair, its thick dark brown waves restrained in a ponytail for now, my khaki shorts and my Miskatonic Greek Council T-shirt. I still doubted she knew or understood what she was looking at, but she seemed to. I asked Professor Barley about that.

“You know Kayleigh, I wouldn’t like to say how much they comprehend about us, but I bet it’s more than you’d think. The whole point of this test is to show you how intelligent these animals are.”

“I thought we were supposed to be grossed out by a bit of sea snot squeezing through some tiny gap?” Juan Delray remarked from off to one side, his perpetual smirk creeping into his voice, not for the first time.  I rolled my eyes and made a loud ‘Tsk’ noise, this was involuntary, driven by my loathing for the man-child.

“You’re all postgrad marine biologists,” The professor said to the group, ignoring the tone of Delray’s interjection, “I should hope you understand how an octopus body works, no skeleton, very flexible, etcetera.  What we’re looking for here, is signs of her intelligence. Notice there isn’t actually a gap anywhere for her to get out of the tank, but she could use that little bar as a lever to make one.”

“Octopuses are amazing, but also terribly unlucky,” She continued, “Their intelligence, as a species is so great that they can solve complex puzzles and outwit pretty much any other creature in the sea, but their lives are brutally brief, the males die after mating and the females starve to death while caring for their eggs.  If they had evolved their way out of that, then they could have developed a society. One whose sophistication rivalled our own.”

Delray waddled over to the tank, hoisting his cargo pants back up over the crest of his globular hips, a task of sisyphusian proportions, then bent over, placing his lunar landscape of a face directly adjacent to the creature in the tank.  The two beings exchanged glances for a moment, then Delray rapped sharply on the glass with his meaty knuckle.

“Do something bitch!”

“Juan! Enough! We’ll talk about this afterwards,” Professor Barley admonished.

“Just getting the ball rolling Professor,” he said, before turning to his accomplice, Billy Matheson, and sharing a loathsome grin, both making a strange snorting laugh.  As he turned back to the octopus, she moved suddenly, flying at the side of the tank, tentacles first, as if to attack.  Though the glass prevented it and left her splayed across the side of the tank with her suckers and beak working furiously.  The professor threw down her clipboard in frustration,

“Fucking hell Juan! She’s too agitated to do anything now,” then she said to the group, “Ok, better make it chow time everybody, we’ll have another try at this tomorrow, while Mr Delray assists all with an extra turn on net-mending duty.”  The students filed out to the sound of Juan’s spluttering protests, I was last to go, watching the poor creature in the tank as the Professor and a couple of the regular crew attempted to recapture her, gently, and return her to the small tank she’s been kept in previously, there were tentacles everywhere as she flailed about, confused and frightened.  In that moment I felt truly sorry for this creature, supposedly so clever, being kept in a box for us to study.

That night I lay awake in my cramped bunk in the crew quarters, listening to the others snores, grunts and sleeping murmurs.  Delray wasn’t there, his net-mending would keep him out on deck for another few hours, which gave me no small amount of satisfaction.  However all I could think about was that octopus, alone and frightened in the tank.  In her eyes I had glimpsed something, the more I ruminated on it, the more I became convinced she could understand everything that was happening, that she felt shame and despair at being reduced to a specimen to be examined and tested. In the end I decided I would release her.  The little tank she had been moved to had a lock on it, I resolved to sneak into the main cabin, where all the specimens, living and…not living were kept in various boxes and bags, stacked nearly to the ceiling, pop the lock on the octopus’ box and walk away.  Plausible deniability would be my defence after that.

I got out of my cot, pulling on my dressing gown and pushing my feet into my slippers, shaped like the gaping maws of two great whites, and tiptoed out of the room, and down the tiny corridor to the main cabin.  I had to take special care to steady myself against the roll of the boat, bracing my arms on either wall. 

I pulled up short with a start as I edged round the corner into the cabin, there was a pair of feet sticking out from behind a pile of boxes and packing crates, one foot was bare and one had a sock pulled half off, they were twitching and convulsing silently, as if their owner was having some form of seizure.

“Hello? Are you ok? Who’s there?” I ran over behind the stack, and then, I’m not proud of myself here, I screamed like a victim in a slasher movie. 

The person prone on the floor was Juan Delray, I only knew this by his faded Rush t-shirt.  His face was totally obscured by his assailant, the octopus. 

How she had got herself wrapped completely over his head I never knew, but her slimy, pliant body made a perfect seal, bulging outwards occasionally as beneath her, Delray struggled to breathe.

I stood, frozen to the spot, utterly horrified as the creature completed her act of murder, her skin changing from angry red to a light blue, the colour an octopus turns when satisfied and contented.  Delray shuddered his last and was still.  In that moment I understood the motives of the creature on the floor. 

Revenge.

She had understood Juan’s cruel mockery and planned a strike of her own, I saw now her box, the lock broken and the lid pushed open, creating a tiny crack which had allowed her to escape.  The fridge, which stood in the small nook that constituted the galley, was open, its yellow light giving a sickly hue to the scene.  Delray must have come in from his net mending and sought himself a midnight snack, one he would now never eat.

The octopus slithered off Delray’s head.  Removed from the water her body lay almost totally flat, a gelatinous pancake of tentacular malice, eyes poking up from the slowly moving mass, looking around, while the arms stretched out across the floor, feeling, searching for their next target.

Still unable to shake my limbs from the terror inspired torpor, I felt a tentacle brush my feet, thinking soon this sea creature would envelop me, cutting off my air as she did to Juan a moment ago, but she moved on, instead hauling herself up a table leg, onto the keyboard of the ship’s main PC.  Facebook was open on the screen and the action of her questing arms depressed keys, spelling a series of random characters in the ‘what’s on your mind box’, before another arm pressed the backspace and deleted everything.  With torturous slowness, she pulled her whole body up onto the desk, and arranged all her arms so they snaked over the keyboard.  One by one, characters appeared in the box once again.

“moar cCuming. yOo pEritty.  go Naow.”

Suddenly, she dropped from the desk and slid across the room, squeezing under the door which lead out to the main weatherdeck with a sudden burst of terrifying speed. The letters spelt out by the creature on the computer lurked at the back of my mind, I still considered them to be random characters, glimpsed in a hurry and not considered further.  I ran to the door and threw it open looking out onto the deck, lit by floodlights in the darkness.  The octopus was pulling herself up over the rail at the edge of the deck,  I imagine our eyes met again as she sat, draped over the rail like a wet towel, then she dropped into the sea, regaining her true shape in the supporting embrace of the water and disappeared into the abyss, powered by a jet of water.

I leant over the rail, trying to get a glimpse of her as she receded, and was nearly thrown from the ship as there was a great crash, and the groaning sound of metal under stress.  The ship lurched violently, and seemed to have stopped suddenly, as if the anchor had been dropped and caught on something immovable. 

I saw more shapes in the water now, approaching from the blackness, they seemed to surround the boat, thin at first, moving swiftly and in formation.  Then as one they spread their bodies to slow down, tentacles now visible and their skins changing from pale blue to deepest red.

I wanted to warn the others, but there was barely time before they slithered up the sides of the boat and infiltrated through every tiny nook and cranny.  I watched from the lifeboat I had commandeered as the lights all over the Stoneking went out, and listened, agonized over the screams of the crew and my fellow interns, which fell silent shockingly quickly.  As I gunned the lifeboat’s engine and sped in the direction I reckoned the eastern seaboard must be, I saw the boat begin to settle astern, disappearing under the waves, perhaps they had made a hole in it somehow?
In the madness of that night it seems silly to recall, that a glowing plume of tentacled flotsam seemed to rise, in two great pillars.  Taller even than the main faculty building at Miskatonic, embracing the floating tomb called Stoneking.

Simon: Time Displaced Knight

Part One

A few days ago I was chatting with my friend and he struck on the idea for a character called Simon: Time Displaced Knight. I was inspired and promptly wrote this the next day. This might be a one off or a John Carter of Mars style serial. I've already got a few notions of what to do next but who knows?I'm notoriously unreliable, so this may stand alone.

“Dammit boss! Them folks stink worse than a sack ‘o possums!”
“As usual Finnegan, I have no idea what that word means.”

I let my head loll to the left in sheer exasperation as we rode along the dirt track, the trees to either side were arranged in neat rows, as was the way in this part of France, though the pleasing aesthetic was somewhat spoiled by the mouldering corpses of Frankish soldiers, beheaded en masse and thrown from the road, presumably to keep the way clear for the English army I was tracking.

Since being expelled from my father’s household in Limoges I had sought to make my way in the world as a Knight Errant, or less romantically, a sellsword. Though success had not been forthcoming, as Father had sent heralds far and wide, letting it be known that Sir Guillame D’Avanché would look unkindly on any lord who gave his wayward son employment, presumably hoping to drive me back into the loving, and utterly suffocating bosom of my family. If that was his hope I planned to leave him sorely disappointed, I would pledge my sword and lance to the hated English instead, they were known to hire mercenaries to bolster their ranks, and Father, who had tilted against them at Crécy, would no doubt spit feathers when he heard.

As we trotted round a corner I had hoped to see a plume of smoke above the trees, a sign that we neared the English encampment, and might reach it before night fully descended, but there was only the darkening sky of a summer evening, and a straight stretch of road, and more corpses. Finnegan chose this moment of slight despondency on my part to resume his nonsensical soliloquy,

“Well sir, far as ah can reckon, though ah ain’t never seen one with mah own eyes, a possum is a small, kinda stinky creature, with four, or perhaps five legs, and a great eye in the centre o’ his head, usually to be found playin’ a banjo on his front porch.”

I leant right forward in the saddle so as I could peer, upside down, straight into Finnegan’s eyes.

“Where, by the name of all that’s holy, do you get this nonsense? Do you make it up? Or did someone else in Father’s stable fill your head with it?”

“Shucks Sir, Ah ain’t never had much o’ that imagination, ah’m just a horse.”

Silently I cursed again at being afflicted with the most stupid of all Father’s horses for my mount. Cloudesly Shovel, my brother’s great black destrier, would have been my first choice, but in the gloom of my midnight departure, he and Finnegan had looked much alike. The crucial difference being that Cloudesly Shovel had been educated since a foal on the fine art of conversation, literature, history and could sing several hymnals and epic poems from memory. Finnegan meanwhile, had never mastered much more than how to spit into an upturned bascinet from 10 yards distant, and howling some incoherent song of his own invention, which mostly repeated more of his nonsense words, such as ‘railroad’ and ‘Mississippi’.

“Forget it, keep an eye out for a spot free of bodies will you, we must make camp soon.”

“yesum.”

A little way up the road the press of corpses among the trees grew in intensity, about a mile along from where I had spotted the first body, the distribution spoke of a force being caught on the march and fleeing before their assailants, innumerable hoof prints on the road revealing the English men to be mounted, chasing down the fleeing Frenchmen along the track, catching them one by one, until finally, here, their main body elected to make a stand, the great wash of blood on the road a testament to their end. Carefully I negotiated this unfortunate and messy scene. Technically, I suppose these men were my countrymen, but in those feudal days loyalty rarely stretched beyond the people sworn to one’s own lord, and the distant, little known king in far off Paris. War, with the English, and sometimes small rebellious parts of France, was part of daily life, and ostensibly the profession of my class, I was no stranger to death.

I jumped down from Finnegan’s back and stepped off the road, into a patch of wood mercifully clear of bodies, and busied myself with gathering kindling and preparing a fire. An action I had performed many times before and did automatically, my mind a blank. Before I was fully aware of it I was sitting, staring into the flames of a new campfire, it’s warmth seeping into my bones, and soothing my few, minor aches from the road. Finnegan was busying himself cropping down every visible bit of grass and weed with an alacrity and determination he displayed nowhere else.

Suddenly his ears twitched and he raised his head, peering past me into the blackness of the deep wood, his expression unreadable, even for a horse.

“Boss? There’s something over yonder, some sorta ghost light. s’got me about ready to soil ma britches.”

I turned to look in the direction he was indicating and indeed saw a glow emanating from through the trees. It was like no other light I had seen in my life, neither the brilliant pure white of daylight nor the warm orange of candle or firelight, but a strange blue, waxing and waning in intensity like a heartbeat as I watched.

“Can you hear that Boss?”

Finnegan whispered from behind me. I could hear nothing and held my hand up to him for silence, though now he was clearly growing agitated, I could hear his hooves stamping and scuffing the ground and his breath coming stronger and stronger.

“They’re screamin’! So many people, them folks’re killin’ them all! They need our help!”

Before I could react I was thrown sideways and cracked my head against a tree, the sharp branches reaching out and entangling me, tearing my surcoat as I pulled away. Finnegan had barged me aside and run straight for the hellish light, in less than a second it’s glare had consumed him. I cried out and ran after him, stumbling and crashing from tree to tree in my haste to keep pace with my mount. Insane, ill-mannered excuse for a warhorse he may have been, but I was no knight without him.

Shortly I came upon the source of the light, though beyond the fact it was the source of the light I am at a loss to describe it further. All aspects of it were concealed in totality by the blinding light issuing forth. I looked down upon this bizarre scene from atop a small hillock, down which Finnegan was galloping headlong. Heedless of my cries and entreaties he made for the object, the light surrounded him and he was lost to it. Rather than being obscured as before he seemed to have now passed a threshold, as if moving through a doorway. I shouted his name. Getting no response, I continued my pursuit and ran, as he had, straight into the light.

The ground suddenly dropped away and I fell forwards. The drop was a few feet only, but in full armour as I was this was enough for me to stumble. Arresting my fall with my hands I plunged them directly into dry, dusty earth, which was kicked up into my face. Spluttering and groaning from my fall I managed to turn over and get into a sitting position, not an easy task in armour, and looked about.

Several things struck me at once, I was no longer in a wood, the temperature was much warmer, and it was no longer night. I was however still near a road, or rather I had landed in a ditch adjacent to a dusty track. Finnegan was pacing back and forth across said track like an expectant equine father, muttering incessantly about innocent folks in danger, but seemingly less convinced now about where he should go and what he should do about it. Everything here was the colour of old paper, flat and featureless, save for a great, snowcapped mountain looming over us down the road, and a collection of small, distant shapes that could only be a city, though in many ways unlike any city I had ever beheld before.

As a small boy, my father had taken me and my brother with him to Paris, to see The King. To my infantile mind Paris was the biggest city ever built, sitting like a great beast spreading across both sides of the river Seine and the great island in the middle, swallowing up people and animals and supplies and shitting out culture, art, government and money! I had never forgotten the sights and the feeling of awe at the size and my own insignificance at my nation’s capital. Paris would have fit comfortably into one of the sprawls of huts that had leaked from this city’s walls onto the surrounding plain. Even from this great distance I could see, but only dimly comprehend the enormous size of it.

It was also, every inch of it, burnt.

The work was long done and no smoke rose into the air, but everywhere I looked the buildings, from the small huts to larger halls and fanes to some unfamiliar faith were black and charred, many without roofs and with beams reaching into the sky like broken fingers on a charred corpse. Of the strange light that seemed to have brought us here, or people in that city, there was no sign, though we were very distant, perhaps too distant to say for sure. Finnegan seemed to have settled down somewhat now, enough so that he responded when I called him.

“Help me up will you?”

I tried to ask fairly gently, as I did want him to spook him any further. his head was hanging low to the ground, his flanks quivering as he breathed, he seemed very tired of a sudden, but he turned his head to acknowledge me and walked over.

“S...sorry Sir Simon,” He said apologetically, “Ah cain’t rightly say ah got’s any notion where we’re at now. Ah reckon s’all mah fault boss.”

He was standing over me now, with his reins dangling down within my reach, I grasped them in both hands and Finnegan walked backwards, pulling me gradually to my feet.

“It is your fault, but I don’t blame you, moon touched beast that you are.” As I regained my feet I scratched Finnegan behind his ears to reassure him, “Now come on, lets see what can be found around here eh?” and perhaps where here was. The obvious course of action was to investigate the city, being the only sign of civilisation in view, so we began walking towards it, for now I went on foot, leading Finnegan by his bridle, saving his strength after the strange occurances in the woods.

It took at least an hour's walk before we seemed to be any closer to anything, further shocking me with the size of the features I was attempting to reach. Somewhat perversely, the mountain seemed to be getting nearer at a faster rate than the city itself, I struggle to understand this, peering at it, shielding my eyes from the harsh sun, which sat more or less directly above me. It occurred to me then that I had already travelled for a full day before this, and had been settling down to make camp and sleep, but now faced many more hours trudge before I could realistically stop safely, no wonder Finnegan had tired so easily.

Suddenly something shifted in my perspective as I peered at the mountain, in much the way the ‘Trompe-l'œil’ illustrated manuscripts Father Phillippe produced could sometimes appear as one thing, a leaping salmon for instance, before you realised it was Christ crucified all along. The object that had appeared to be a vast snowcapped mountain, looming behind the city, was actually much smaller, and much much nearer than I had thought. I mounted Finnegan and we galloped over. As we approached I felt a sickness and a tightening of my guts, a few dozen dead soldiers, born and trained to combat and well versed in what to expect, was nothing to cry about, but this was more than the tiny machinations of men, this was The Wrath of God made manifest. The white mountain was made entirely of bones. I knew it was the bones of every man, woman and child that had lived in this dead city, perhaps millions of souls, hewn like wheat and stacked like some grotesque hay bale. As we approached the surface of the road became softer, sodden and greasy with the putrefaction of a populace, running down the sides of the mounds in black torrents. Finnegan picked up his feet like he was on parade, desperate to avoid touching the foul substances leeching into the landscape. He was muttering again now, these were the people whose screams he had somehow heard and we had rushed here to save, yet they had been dead for many years. I was deeply unmanned by this sight, but Finnegan seemed to be losing his grip, skittering sideways, his eyes wide and mad like a young colt not yet trained to battle readiness. I jumped from the saddle and sank ankle deep into the muck, breaking a crust and releasing vile humours into the air. This cause Finnegan to rear up and kick out in such great distress that he seemed to have lost his higher faculties for a time. Luckily I managed to grab his reins and prevent him bolting, bogged down as I was becoming I could never have caught him. I whispered the secret words of my family’s stable hands into the horses ear, the effect was instantaneous and place him into a trance. I placed my hands either side of Finnegan’s head and looked deep into his eyes.

“Enough now. Peace. Be at peace my brave gelding. A man once cut off your balls, is this truly worse than that?”

That got through to him, he laughed, then shuddered as the fright passed over him.

“Ah was awful afeared boss, t’aint right to do that to folks. And it ain’t right to put yerself in a fellas head neither!” he had turned to shout admonishment at the boneheap. “‘Specially when there ain’t nuthin’ to be done for ya” he worked his lips for a second and spat onto the roadside. “Lets get away boss, ain’t no good to be done here.”

“We’ll head into the city for now,” I decided, “ I am bone tired, we must rest awhile before we try to leave, perhaps find some food.”

Finnegan shook his head as we walked side by side toward the city. “T’aint nuthin’ here sir, them’s that done this devilry took all the stuff worth tookin’. Then they did that,” Indicating the bones, “and put the whole dang place to fire.”

“How do you know so much about it? how could you hear those people before?” “Ah don’t have the first earthly idea boss, Ah can…” He paused cocking his head and searching for the right word. “Remember? But Ah don’t remember remembrin’ afore now. Don’t make no sense.” He looked up at the walls “Zhongdu! biggest, finest, damnedest best city inna world! They had a Emp-er-or, and fancy clothes and booze and purty wimmin and everythang you could want.”

His eyes had grown bright as he said this, as if he really did remember all these things, who can say if it was true or not, but Finnegan, the mad gelding, believed with all his heart. As we approached the gates, long since collapsed and broken, but still offering an entrance I saw a lone rider approaching from many miles distant, galloping like the very devil was at his heels. Behind him was a cloud of dust I had assumed he had kicked it up himself but now I saw it was far too large for that. He turned in the saddle, raising a small bow he held and firing back into the dust. I was impressed, Horse archers were known, but rare in my home, most travelled west from far off Hungary, and now I looked I saw the man had something of that race about him, in his clothes and wargear, for he must be a warrior. I mounted Finnegan and we galloped just inside the gate, to observe matters largely unseen. No sooner had we reached cover than the rider’s pursuers emerged from the dust, there were at least two hundred, maybe more and at their head was a truly terrifying figure. His dark brown, almost red hair flowed long down his back and blew wild in the wind of his passage, mingling with his equally long beard. His clothes were those of a savage, animal skins and furs, but he waved a great curved sword about his head, a shining weapon with a golden hilt, a sword fit for a king, he was screaming, I think with delight at the chase, and in that moment I hoped never to find myself in the position of that one lone rider.

As one his men raised their own bows and fired, though the fire was slightly staggered, as each man waited until his horse was at the apex of his gallop, with all four feet in the air, before loosing his arrow. The poor soul fleeing them died instantly, riddled with shafts and bleeding into the dust. Upon getting a good look at the leader of this company, Finnegan again shifted nervously under me,

“Boss! that’s him!” he said in a stage whisper I was sure the men across the plain would hear.

“Quiet! who is he?” I whispered back.

“He’s the murderer of this place, The thief o’ the world, The Great Khan! So mean he’d fight a rattler and give it the first bite! We gotta run, or we’re dead meat boss!”

He made to move off, I gave a sharp tug on the reins.

“No! They’ll catch us by God! I don’t like the look of those arrows.”

“Yer wearin’ yer boiler plate ain’cha? them bows is only little things, a mite too weak to pierce yer armour, and they ain’t brung their bodkins. What Ah wouldn’t give fer a colt .45 about now.”

Finnegan made to run off again but still I restrained him, It was possible the riders might simply leave now their quarry was dead. As far as I could tell they weren’t aware of us. Finnegan remained agitated however, insistent to be off. I threatened him with the spurs if he didn’t behave.

“You wouldn’t dare buckaroo.”

“Test me, then, you are the steed, I, the rider. I make the decisions here.” I held my leg out at a great angle , the pointed spurs glinting in the sun, a threat should he make any more noise or attempts to run. he looked round at me in the saddle as much as his head would allow.

“Sir Simon, we gotta burn the breeze now, or they will find us, they’re coming in here to check for survivors.”

“How could you know? you claim to have much knowledge you should not have. Until proven otherwise I shall trust my own eyes and ears first Finnegan.”

The riders out on the plain had now stripped the dead man of all his possessions, and put his wounded horse out of its misery. They also seemed to be butchering the poor animal as if they planned to eat it later, perhaps they did. Presently they turned towards the city and rode straight for us at a gentle trot, as soon as they did Finnegan protested yet again.

“Tarnation! that does it, we’re goin’.”

He made to gallop away and no pulling on the reins would stop him, in desperation I kicked hard with the spurs. but for my effort I simply made my poor frightened horse neigh loudly in pain. Naturally the riders heard this and immediately began to gallop at full speed for the city. The decision made for us now, we too galloped out of the gate and back down the road we had come from, away from our new enemies.

“Sorry bout that boss, but we’re committed now, nuthin’ fer it but to buckle to and get away.”
I patted his neck as we rode,

“Save your breath, it’s fine, just get us away from here.” I leant forward and held on for dear life as we rode.

This land, open and flat as it was, was perfect country for horsemen, not a fence or hedgerow for a hundred miles in any direction. I quickly realised this would be our downfall. Finnegan was a warhorse, trained to carry a knight in armour across battlefields, while wearing armour plates of his own. He was not currently weighed down by them, only his everyday tackle and so could run faster than I expected, but he was also halfway blown from earlier in the day. Our only hope of escape would have been to find somewhere to lose our pursuers and hide, but on this wide open land, all they had to do was keep up the chase on their small, light, very fast horses and eventually they would gain on us. I unslung my shield from across my back, and drew my sword in preparation for that moment. It was a cheap thing, that sword, bought to replace the one my father had broken in front of me the day before I left. I regretted having no lance then, for if I had I would have turned about and charged these foreigners down, and perhaps put the fear of god into a few of them before I was slain.

Our pursuers grew ragged now, the stronger ones began to leave others behind and gain on us gradually. The first of the arrows fell, many missed but some found their mark bouncing off my breast plate or sticking, ineffectually in my surcoat. I wondered why they were not targeting Finnegan, my best guess being they coveted him as a remount for their king, this Khan, and were confident they would not need to, that they could ride me down without hurting the horse. The two fastest riders were coming up alongside us now, one on either side, one on the right with a curved blade like his king’s, the other, almost close enough to reach out and touch me, standing up in the saddle with a drawn bow, levelled at my unprotected head. By a miracle I caught his arrow on my shield, then rather than chance my luck a second time I flung my shield at him. It caught him in the throat and sent the man falling off his horse into the dust, those following rode over him without a second glance.

Finnegan was going for the horse of the other man, baring his teeth to try and bite, though his opponent was doing the same, but seemed unable to respond to the traditional warhorse taunting.

“Get back ye bastard! Yer uglier’n a burnt boot! If yer brains were dynamite there woulna be enough ta blow yer nose!”
Perhaps he didn’t speak our language.

I thrust my blade straight forward, but the swordsman knocked it aside with a lightning parry at the last moment, so all I did was tear a rent in his fur coat with the tip of my sword. He swung at me himself with a great arc, meaning to strike off my head, I didn’t have time to fence with him forever, so I tried my favourite trick from my days in the melee at tournament. I tossed my sword up and caught it in my left hand, holding the reins and blade in one hand, and grabbed the other man’s swinging sword arm by the wrist, and with one sharp tug pulled him from the saddle. As I did another arrow shot past me, missing my face by inches. It was the Khan, he was at the head of his men now, staring at me with such intensity, as if he could set me on fire with his mind. We were running out of tricks, and time.

“I think this is it Finnegan, well done lad, you’re the best horse I could ask for.”

I moved my sword back to my right hand, preparing to turn around and die meeting my foes head on, when suddenly Finnegan swerved to the left, galloping with a fresh burst of speed right across the face of the mass of men and horses following. I had no clue what he was doing until we leapt. Ahead of us was that Ghost Light once again, it had reappeared and was already enveloping us before I was even aware of it. The last I knew of the Khan and his men was a shout of rage in an unknown tongue, fading into the distance.