Twelfth Krampus Night (9 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Otto looked from atop the wall walk to see flames rising within the stables. He could have sworn he saw Beate and Heinrich run and jump into the stables moments earlier.

“I hope that wasn't Lord Wilhelm who just ran in there.” Franco, the burgmann, stood next to Otto near the castle corner to the gatehouse's left.

“Me too, but it's the creature that concerns me more.” Otto, arms folded across his chest, ignored the mounting flames in favor of what hid in darkness beyond the bastion. The cloud cover suffocated any hope of moonlight.

“Whatever it is seems to be exerting a lot of energy.” Franco, his longbow shouldered, a full quiver of arrows on his back, fitted a visorless barbute over his head.

Otto could only describe it as
crushing
—some brute force malleting earth. It happened every ten seconds: a determined yelp followed by an earthshaking pound. This repeated near twenty times until one of the thumps produced a quick crack. Then the pounding intensified, leading to what sounded like stone crumbling.

Guards, thirty of them by Otto's count, pressed against each other to view blackness through the crenels. Cold wind blew by the torches, whirling the flames, highlighting the men's grave faces.

A pained, straining roar startled the guards, and the lingering lament rose to what sounded like a satisfied “Ahhhhhhh!” followed by something incredibly heavy smacking the ground.

A few of the younger guards vomited over the wall.

That's when they heard chain links flapping and slinging against—they couldn't say. But they knew whatever groaned and determinedly fiddled the chains was preparing for battle.

“What about the baron's sons?” Franco asked Otto.

“What of them? They should be in their chambers, protected.”

“Should we send someone to be with them?”

Otto surveyed the guards and noticed the chains had ceased clinking.

“I think we're going to need every last one of them here,” Otto said.

Franco scanned the interior castle grounds. “You do realize the stables are on fire.”

“Any other night, I'd be down there and so would you. The bigger threat's out there.”

Franco returned to the unknown near the forest. “Could be a diversion, whatever's making the noise. The other sides of the castle are nowhere near as protected as this one.”

Otto held his tongue, thinking it over.

“It's not an army—we'd have heard them massing. We have lookouts in the village who'd have charged up here if they knew someone was advancing. It's that thing.”

The groan was quick, followed by the chain links clinking and something being rolled, thumping end over end, a distance away from the castle.

“Light it up!” Otto said.

“Archers ready!” Franco called. “Fire at will!”

The guards knew not where to shoot, so they estimated and fired at the spot generating noise. The arrows stuck dirt or stone and set nothing ablaze, but their fall gave flickering light to a massive figure twirling in place, clutching something.

“Keep firing!” Franco followed his own command and shoved an arrow into a torch. He shot the arrow, only to see it deflect off of something it hit midair.

More arrows rained around the figure that steadily rotated toward the castle.

A few arrows struck the creature's back but didn't harm it. The dancing flames highlighted what they'd hit—a wooden barrel—and further revealed what was coming.

“That's it! I can see its horns!” Otto said. “But what's it hold—”

From Otto's vantage point, the monster briefly vanished, but the knight knew it impossible. The creature was still there, advancing as it whirled. Something huge momentarily blotted it out in a timed fashion.

The clouds parted, allowing the moon to bathe the ground in silver. The guards' eyes adjusted to see a monster circling clockwise, both fists entwined in chain. Tethered to the end links was a jagged boulder orbiting its master.

Franco saw clouds encroaching on the moon and knew time was short.

“Shoot it! Shoot it now!” He drew an arrow as he ran to the bastion's left side—the position allowing the clearest shot. He knew the two archers next to him as spectacular bowmen. “Aim for the neck.”

No sooner had he said it when both guards crumpled facedown on the walk. Franco ducked below the crenel and pulled the nearest guard faceup. The man's mouth appeared covered in mud, but Franco immediately recognized it as blood and saw it pulsing from the guard's neck around a throwing-knife handle. The other facedown guard's head rested in a slick blood pool of his own.

Franco couldn't conjure the words as two more guards, knives stuck in their throats, fell around him.

“Get out of the bastion!” It was Otto, yelling up to the guards fruitlessly firing arrows from the tower's windows.

Franco took cover behind a battlement and peeked down to see the monster's final rotation before the boulder crushed the bastion's base. The thunderous strike triggered stones to cascade into the moat. The beast roared and whipped back the boulder and in one fluid motion swung the rock to again pummel the bastion. The second impact shifted the bastion forward, the way a swift gut punch forces forward the breathless victim.

Otto too saw what would transpire with another direct hit. “Franco, get away from there!” The watchman stayed below the battlements and scurried from the shaky corner. Otto turned and surveyed the outer courtyard. The intense stable blaze combined with the momentarily bright moon lit the yard enough for him to see Lord Wilhelm firing an arrow. He knew not at what, but screamed for the baron's eldest son to get into hiding.

Chapter Eighteen

The boulder's third booming hit to the bastion's base sent spider cracks streaking up the tower, which began to shiver away its stones. The crumbling base could no longer support the tower's heavy topside. The remaining guards took their chances and jumped from the bastion windows as the tower groaned forward, toppling across the moat.

Beate and Heinrich ignored Wilhelm, for they knew everyone within eyesight was focused on the tower's fall. More inexplicable was the horned hulk that leaped atop the base's rubble.

A dagger tip pricked unsuspecting Heinrich's throat, and he and Beate, still mounted on Uli, looked to see Karl wielding the blade. A few feet away from the lord stood what they knew to be Karl's horse.
Karl rode here in his condition?
Beate thought.
He must really be angry at—

“Get down or I kill him.” Karl, one of his eyes twitching, edged the blade forward to draw blood. “You first, Beate. I insist.”

“My lord.” Beate's eyes glanced back and forth from the bizarre beast to the fledgling rapist. “Mad as you are at me right now, I think you should look at what's behind you.”

“Get off the horse. Now!”

Heinrich felt the blade trembling against his throat. “Do it, Beate. We'll be all right.”

Beate nimbly slid down Uli's side.

“Behind the horse.” Karl motioned with his head.

She acquiesced.

“Beate, if you run, I slaughter Heinrich.”

“She won't.” Wilhelm, his bow shouldered, had caught up and, from atop Horst, snatched Beate's arm.

“Your turn, Heinrich,” Karl said.

Heinrich slipped off Uli and stood next to Beate. Wilhelm had dismounted Horst and now clutched Beate from behind, holding his dagger to her throat.

“Wilhelm, should we kill them here or in the keep?” A star-rattling roar shook Karl enough to look at what every other soul in the castle was watching. The monster stalked down the stones, eyeing the hostage party the entire time.

“So, sticking something where you shouldn't!” it yelled toward Beate.

Her eyes widened. “Wait! You're mad at
me
?”

Both of the lords' horses took one look at the beast and shrieked as they ran from their masters.

Karl ignored the groin pain and slung himself atop Uli. “Wilhelm, come!”

The elder lord ditched the peasants and scrambled onto the horse. “Go!”

The lords rode Uli toward the second gatehouse, still open.

“Beate!” Heinrich dragged her into a run and they chased the lords.

“Are you insane?” she gasped, looking behind her as the thing glowered at them.

The remaining castle workers in the court swarmed the gatehouse like ants on sugar.

“I think we'll be safer in there than out here!” Heinrich said.

Karl and Wilhelm blew past the open gate. Beate and Heinrich saw Otto emerge with his broadsword from the pack of panicked people. He was joined by Franco and a dozen other chain-mail-armored, sword- and pike-wielding guards.

“Surround him!” Otto commanded the guards.

Krampus chortled. He still carried the thick chain and whipped it forward. Otto and Franco ducked as the boulder hurtled from the rubble and over their heads. Beate and Heinrich breached the interior gatehouse just as the rock wedged itself into the opening, preventing the portcullis from closing, leaving near the base a gap large enough for even the biggest knight to enter.

The monster dropped the chain and reached into its barrel for the ruten. Franco rose, his longbow ready, and fired. Krampus swatted the arrow with the switch and lurched toward the gatehouse.

“Attack!” Otto and the guards war-cried as they ran. The monster ducked and charged the two closest like a bull, skewering one on each horn, and stood so the twitching bodies could complete their bloody descent. It flicked its head, ridding itself of the corpses, and twirled with its outstretched ruten, smacking away swords and pikes, and crushing two guards in their faces. Otto barreled into the thing's chest, sending it on its back. Franco fired another arrow as the monster sat up, but the beast was too quick and seized the sizzling arrow before the tip could split its eye.

Two guards, their pikes pointed at the sitting creature's back, charged. Their battle helmets muffled a piercing shriek. The old lady arched over their heads, flipping in a circle midair, and landed in front of them. The guards continued charging, the beast's spine within sight, and as they passed the woman, they felt their stomachs burning.

They began stumbling and slowed enough for the monster to hear them. It stood, whirled and was about to strike with its ruten when the pair collapsed, a line of intestines trailing underneath them.

The woman flicked blood from her blades and walked into the fray. Six guards, Franco and Otto remained. The humans stood with their backs to the gatehouse, the inhuman walking toward them like they didn't exist.

“Don't cower! This is why you're here!” Otto yelled to his nervous guards. Arrows flew from atop the interior castle wall walks. Otto exhaled, buoyed by the sight of archers trying to take down the monsters.

Dozens of arrows poked from Krampus, who appeared a hairy, lumbering pin cushion—behind which Perchta hid for protection, but only momentarily. She sheathed her daggers and drew her remaining throwing knives and hopped to Krampus's side, aiming and releasing at lightning speed.

She smiled as three guards fell backward, causing the remaining archers to cower behind the battlements.

“Stand and you die!” she screeched.

An archer ignored her and spun from a battlement to line up a shot. He hit the floor a second later, a throwing knife jutting from his left eye.

“See? I've got more!” she screamed, and then quietly to Krampus, “I'm out.”

Krampus roared at the wall, keeping the scared men shaking where they stooped.

Franco stood next to Otto. Each of the men walked backward, in time with each of the monsters' forward steps.

“We'll be in greater numbers inside,” Franco said.

The old woman slowly unsheathed her daggers from her back belt and grinned at Otto. Two guards standing to the knight's sides saw this and retreated to the gatehouse.

“I can't blame them.” Franco's voice trembled. “That thing should be dead.”

“I told that thing I'd die before I'd let it breach the castle,” Otto said. “It's mine.”

Krampus casually plucked the arrows from its body as it walked, and then reached into its barrel and pulled another stretch of chain, its links smaller in size, and brought it back like a whip. Perchta hopped behind Krampus.

Instinct told Franco and Otto to drop. Krampus swiped the chain sideways and ensnared the remaining guards in its links, bunching them together like bananas. Krampus jerked the chain backward and released it, sending the four screaming men over the bastion rubble and out of the castle.

“And then there were two,” it snarled at Otto and Franco.

“Get into the bergfried with the lords,” Otto said. Franco bolted but fell within a foot of the semi-obstructed gatehouse opening, a dagger through his back.

“After you,” Krampus said, and with that Perchta bounded by Franco, retrieving her blade as she ran, and scuttled under the stone.

“Bravery. I appreciate that in my prey.” The monster stopped ten feet from Otto. “But you're
not
my prey and no longer a child. So you now have the opportunity not afforded to your compatriots. Step aside and you live.”

Otto held out his broadsword. “I pledged to the baron that I would protect his castle.”

“And where is this baron of yours? Cowering in that big tower with his boys? I know a bit about the baron. He is a much better man than his children. But that is not saying much.”

“Be that as it may.” Otto stepped forward, his broadsword tip touching the monster's breastbone. “I pledged myself.”

Krampus tsk-tsked. “A brave fool is still a fool.”

Otto rammed the blade forward, but it snapped in half against this thing's stony chest. The knight, his mouth agape, looked at his broken blade. Krampus rammed the ruten against Otto's unarmored head, knocking the big knight sideways into the distant curtain wall.

Krampus scrunched under stone, mumbling, “I have a feeling my prey will not be as brave.”