THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS, by Rev. Joe Kelly

 

The bare back room of the manor house was pungent with old dust, sweat, tobacco smoke, the sour reek of spilled ale. Sir Lawrence, his eyes glittering with greed in the flicker of the single lamp, awaited Conor Dubh O’Brien at the far end of a square, thick-boarded table, fine Indian teak to judge by its elaborate carvings. With a pen knife the boy was impatiently tapping the table, adding fresh notches to the collage of pockmarks, gouges, dents and ominous dark stains that littered every bit of its ruined surface.

Sir Lawrence was in no good shape himself: though young, lean and boyishly handsome, his face was ill-shaven, his eyes marked with dark circles and premature wrinkles, and his periwig and riotous clothes were a drunken and disheveled mess. All about the small, ill-lit room stood a round score of thugs, lackeys and leeches, the only friends the young heir had left. They glowered at the great, rangy Black Irishman, a pack of sickly, cringing curs, rotten fruit from every branch, high and low, of the social tree: brawlers, drunks, indigent gamblers, murderous duelists, smugglers, grave robbers, sex slavers.

Conor Dubh took them in at a keen glance. No more than three among them were worth a damn in a fair fight; and those three were burly, brutish fools. He smiled a crooked smile that did not reach his eye; and, dropping a heavy saddlebag by his chair with a dull jingle, he sat, faced Sir Lawrence, and hefted a hemp-bound leather package up for him to see.

Sir Lawrence’s eyes grew fever-bright as Conor Dubh set the wrapping before him. He yanked the bundle from Conor’s hands even as he set it down, and with his pen knife knife he furiously cut and slashed at the bindings.

“Careful, boy,” Conor said. “You don’t want to damage the goods.”

Sir Lawrence shot him a sharp glare. “No need to worry about that… if it’s the genuine article, no steel can harm it… Jove! I think it is!” His hands shook as the worn leather wrapping unfolded beneath his hands. His eyes flared; his voice quavered as with an ague: “At last!”

Rapturously, he lifted the gleaming doublet from the humble package Conor had conveyed it in. It was a thing of baroque magnificence, gold brocade set in impossibly intricate patterns against a deep, mystic Prussian blue. Not an eye in that room did not at least flicker to it; and little wonder. Kings and dukes would give a fortune to possess it; thieves would spill rivers of blood to grasp it.

Conor’s jaw tightened at the last thought.

Gingerly, Sir Lawrence ran his fingertips delicately down the front of the doublet. “It’s said it was woven with real gold, spun into the finest fibers, like silk; and that the blue is ground from a mysterious stone with mystic powers. They say its maker was a mad, dark libertine, one of the Borgias, who delved deeply into the dark arts. He traveled the breadth of the world, seeking the secrets and the materials needed to–”

Conor growled, “You’ve told me the tale. Pacts with the devil and nameless demon-gods, virgin sacrifices at Witchmas–blood-curdling stuff, really.” He leaned over the table; in the flickering light of the single lamp, his deep blue eyes were as cold and sharp as his blade. “We need to discuss my pay.”

The boy blinked, shook himself. He lay the doublet down carefully, and smiled politely. “But of course, Mister O’Brien. Ah… I trust the transaction went smoothly, yes?”

Conor’s smile was tight and mirthless. “You’re a very bad liar, my boy. No, don’t try to argue.” He held up a hand as Sir Lawrence’s face flushed with drunken indignity. “If you were expecting things to go as planned, you wouldn’t’ve given me a bag of counterfeit coin.”

He hefted the saddlebag from the floor and set it on the table with a jingling thump. “Lead and tin, painted silver–you really thought I wouldn’t notice? Much less, that damned Dutchman.” Conor clucked his tongue. “The bastard tried to cross me, as you damn well expected. One of his friends tried to knife me in the back.” He chuckled nastily. “Well, I knocked the candle over, grabbed the doublet, and fought my way free. And then I spent the next week playing cat-and-mouse with that double-dealing rogue and his rotten friends in the slums of Amsterdam, them stalking me for the doublet even as I tracked them down one by one by one and killed them.”

Sir Lawrence’s eyes had cooled. “So. The Dutchman is dead, as is anyone who might think of avenging his memory.”

Conor nodded carefully, the cold smile still fixed upon his lips. “You can sleep soundly at night, my boy.”

“Hm. Well.” Sir Lawrence spoke a little distractedly; his eyes and fingers went back to the fabulous doublet. “Having acquainted yourself with the Dutchman, then, you’ll understand why I anticipated his treachery. The man was an honorless, faithless villain–did I tell you he stole the doublet from a monastery? Not only that, but he wantonly murdered a number of the helpless monks in the process! But, then, that’s why I sought a resourceful fellow, such as yourself; and, besides, I did warn you to exercise caution, didn’t I?” He looked up again, apparently satisfied that all lingering concerns had been addressed.

Conor’s icy smile spread a trifle. Sir Lawrence shifted uneasily at the giant Black Irishman’s demonic glare; his lackeys, even the burly thugs, cowered a little at the burning blue eyes. Conor’s voice was a low, dangerous purr: “You know, boy, I’d have gladly slain that Dutchman for you. You had but to ask. But I don’t kill for the sport of it. Blood’s always got its price.”

Sir Lawrence’s voice quavered: “Sir! I am not in the habit of hiring murderers! We agreed only–”

The explosive slap of Conor’s hand upon the table cut him short, and made everyone jump. The Irishman’s steely grin vanished, replaced by the naked, Pagan Black O’Brien fury. “FIFTY POUNDS!” he roared, “And not a penny less–that’s my fee for killin’ a man! You’ll pay me my fifteen pounds for the brocade, another fifty for killing the Dutchman and his friends like you wanted–and you can add ten pounds’ interest, for all the trouble, and for being a cheap, blue-blooded son of a bitch!”

A moment, fear and indignant anger warred in Sir Lawrence’s eyes. As quickly, they vanished, replaced by a very practical, cold, polite smile. “Dear me. Seventy-five pounds sterling. A good deal more than I had expected.”

Conor’s own icy smile of menace returned. “Had you trusted that Dutchman, you would’ve lost–what was it? Fifteen hundred? You’d be mortgaging your estate just now, and with nothing to show for it.”

Sir Lawrence shot Conor a sharp glare, but his frozen aristocratic smile remained. “You’re right, of course.” Carefully, he stood, and began to step round the table, fumbling at his purse.

Conor smiled darkly back; his eyes flitted about, watching, listening, to Sir Lawrence’s men. The three brutes were already circling round him, so obvious they might as well have shouted their intentions; the others cowered against the wall, fearful of making a move until the big men had him pinned. A simple enough trap to get out of, for a quick hand; and Conor’s was deadly quick. He let his hand drop to his dirk, tensed his legs to spring from his seat–

But he hadn’t bothered to watch the foppish boy. He didn’t wonder until a moment too late why Sir Lawrence was casually reaching for the saddlebag of counterfeit coins.

With a cry Sir Lawrence flung the false coins at Conor’s face. Conor threw his arm up to block the metal hail, the dirk flying from his fingers in his shock, and then Sir Lawrence’s big thugs were on him, grappling him even as he roared and bucked against them like a berserk bull. He stomped one man’s boot, smashed another’s nose flat with a head-butt–

Something solid cracked the top of his skull. He saw stars; his mind was awhirl. Blinking hard, his vision cleared to reveal a point of gleaming steel raised above him, and a bloody, cursing face with a smashed nose, the eyes livid with rage.

Sir Lawrence shouted, “Not here–you damned fools! Take him out onto the Moor!” Still-shaking hands tied Conor’s arms and legs, his weapons were stripped from him, and he was hefted like a trussed hog and carried out the back door.

A moment, he glimpsed Sir Lawrence, his eyes gleaming fever-bright as he caressed the doublet he’d spilled so much blood for. Then the blackness of a moonless night swallowed Conor; there was only the throbbing of his skull, the grunts and curses of the men. He was thrown into the back of a wagon, and there he rocked a time as Sir Lawrence’s men carried him out the back road of the village and into the cold, damp atavism of Dartmoor.

Conor smiled a little at the idea. Here he was, dragged off to be murdered in the dead of night, in this untamed land where old spirits still roamed. There was something almost primal about it. For a man who was secretly sworn to the Morrígan, whose scattered family still practiced the old ways and swore by the true Gods, the Tuath Dé, it felt oddly appropriate to be slain by dagger at midnight. It might have been a ritual to a dark god.

But the god was that most foul and accursed deity, Capitalism, and Adam Smith his prophet. Conor’s smile grew grim. No. This would not do.

Lying on his back, he felt at the knots. Tight, but simple. With a little time and work, he could undo them. But Sir Lawrence’s three burly thugs sat back with him in the wagon, glowering at him with watchful eyes; and there were three others, grinning, scrawny crows who sat up front, laughing and casting insults back at Conor from time to time. Each man had a pistol and a short, heavy-bladed hanger, and it was plain they were itching to use the big blades to chop him to pieces.

The brawler whose nose he’d smashed leaned over Conor, and, his face still smeared with blood, he growled in his West Country brogue, “Real hard man, you are? Ar, a real dangerous fellow? I hear you boast o’ killin’ many a man.” He chuckled and kicked Conor with his muddy boot. “Go on, hard man! Show me how dangerous you are now!”

Conor just laid back and smiled up at him. His lack of response did nothing to discourage the fool. His small, nasty mind was in a vengeful and cruel humor, and he grinned his crooked grin as he made his childish jabs and kicked Conor with his boot. He was working up his appetite for murder.

He was saying something about Conor’s mother, when the shout came: “Hold, or we fire!”

The wagon stumbled to a halt. The men jerked their heads up in surprise. They muttered oaths and shifted nervously in their seats, but none of them went for their pistols.

Frowning, Conor did his best to sit up. Three strangers had halted the wagon: one upon the rough moor path, and two to either side. They were no highwaymen. They were shaggy-haired farmers, a father and his boys, all three of them strong and stocky, tempered and stunted by a lifetime of lean meals and hardscrabble living. Their guns were big-barreled fowling pieces, and a fearful menace was in their eyes.

The wagon driver shouted, “Out of the way! Your lord has business up in the moor!”

But the farmer was undaunted. Nodding at Conor, he asked, “What do you mean with that man in your wagon? Why’s he tied up?”

The man with the bloodied nose looked back at Conor. With the knucklebar of the hanger he rapped Conor over the skull and growled, “Sit down, you!” Conor hissed in renewed pain and glared up at him, but he lay back–and the moment the man looked away again, Conor went to work on his knots.

The wagon driver was shouting back, “None of your business! Now, out of the way, in the name of Sir Lawrence!”

But the farmer was having none of it. “We’ll have no trouble on your account! I don’t know what you mean to do with that man, but you’ll not do it here, you understand? Take him back to Sir Lawrence’s manor–and you tell your young lord, we’ve had enough of his blackguard ways! It’s not the first time we’ve turned up a body upon the Moor!”

His last words were drowned by a chorus of angry protests from Sir Lawrence’s men. All but one hopped off the wagon and advanced angrily on the farmer and his boys, as the farmers fearfully shouted, “Hold!” “Don’t you come no closer!”

And it was at that moment that Conor’s bonds came free. He doubled up, yanked his legs free, and grabbed his dirk where it had been tossed into the wagon bed. Gingerly, he peeked his head over the wagon side. Sir Lawrence’s men were spreading out. Their hands were straying to their pistols. The three farmers were holding their ground, shouting warnings, their fowling pieces at their shoulders; but they feared to fire the first shot, for the remaining men would almost certainly shoot them and hack them to bits.

The man still on the seat was the driver, and like the rest, his hand was straying to the pistol at his side. His eyes were on the old farmer in front of him. Simplicity itself: Conor slipped up behind him, yanked his head back by the hair, and slashed his throat.

His surprised gasp turned into a ghastly gurgle as the blood fountained from the mortal wound. The others turned on Conor, their faces blank with shock as they grabbed at their pistols. A moment, there was confusion in their ranks. It was all the farmer and his boys needed: all three fired at once, and three of the men dropped dead.

The remaining two dropped arms, broke and ran. In one smooth movement, Conor grabbed the pistol from the dying driver, cocked and shot the last of the brawlers square in the spine. The remaining man took one look back, mortal terror in his eyes, and he ran screaming off the trail and into the moor. Conor dropped the pistol, leaped back into the wagon bed and grabbed his musquetoon, praying silently to the Morrígan that the powder would be good. He dropped to one knee, took careful aim, and fired. The man’s last scream was cut short as the top of his head burst open.

A dreadful silence settled over the Moor. Sir Lawrence’s men lay scattered about, dead or silently dying, their heads and chests blasted to bloody ruins.

Conor rose, and cleaned his dirk on the sleeve of the driver. The man’s empty eyes gazed at the cloud-darkened sky, his shirt soaked from collar to waistline in his own blood.

The farmer and his boys stood shivering at the sight of the massacre. The farmer swallowed hard, and quavered, “I hope we’ve saved an honest man, at least. Er–my name is Elzevir, sir. These are my boys. And who would you–er, that is, if you don’t mind tellin’…?”

Conor grinned as he stooped to grab his remaining arms, his claybeg and brace of cavalry pistols. “Conor Dubh O’Brien. And I was innocent in this case, if it puts your minds to rest.” He rose, and, slowly strapping his myriad weapons back on, he grew serious. “You didn’t need to do all that.”

Elzevir shook his head. “We couldn’t stand it. Not again. A man can put up with a greedy lord, an unjust lord; such is the farmer’s lot in life. But a gambler, a rogue, an abuser of women, a murderer…” He shook his head.

Conor grunted. “I knew he was a lordly bastard and a killer. Didn’t know it was that bad.” His musquetoon in his left hand, he vaulted over the wagon side–and stumbled with a pained grunt, as the rush of the fight left him and all his aches came roaring back. Rubbing his spinning head, he said, “Anyhow, we’d best be gone. I’ll help to cover your tracks.”

Elzevir’s eyes flashed at the roguish suggestions behind Conor’s offer. But he nodded stiffly, and followed the Irishman, with his still shivering boys just behind.

#

They were back at the farmhouse soon enough, where they cleaned themselves and their guns of the marks of powder. They took a moment to practice Conor’s story: sure, they had heard gunshots; but it were none of their business. They didn’t want to risk getting shot by highwaymen.

When they were done, Elzevir and his boys slumped in their seats and stared despondently into space. Elzevir grumbled, “There’ll be trouble for all this. Bad trouble.”

Conor sat next to them, and gave the old farmer a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry yourself. You’ve a good story. Worst comes to worst, you can plead self-defense.”

Elzevir glowered up at him. “We killed three men. Six, including the men you slew yourself. Ar, they were murderous rogues, and they deserved it. But Sir Lawrence will bring the Magistrate’s wroth down upon us.” Shaking his head, Elzevir looked back down at his knotted hands resting upon the table. “And it’s all my fool fault. Trying to be a hero… a farmer, like me.”

Stroking his chin thoughtfully, Conor leaned back on his stool. “What’s got your young lord in such a murderous mood?” He smiled grimly. “The gambling, eh?”

“Ar,” Elzevir replied. “The vice and downfall of many a young rake. He’s mortgaged his lands at least once. He’s a frivolous spendthrift. The money’s got to come from somewhere. And if he can’t win it by chance…” The old farmer shrugged despondently.

Conor was nodding. He might have guessed. Fifteen hundred pounds was one thing; he could understand cheating the blackguard Dutchman. But surely a young noble like Sir Lawrence should have been able to put together seventy-five pounds. Instead, he’d tried to murder Conor. Mere greed? Perhaps; or, perhaps he didn’t have two pounds left to rub together.

And then there were the evil legends Conor had learned of the doublet as he tracked the Dutchman down. That damned doublet, so it was said, had passed through the hands of many a famous rake, libertine and profligate. It had the power to give a man luck beyond his dreams; the men who got ahold of it had amassed huge gambling fortunes.

Of course, if that’s what Sir Lawrence was after, either he hadn’t heard the full story, or he no longer cared; for the doublet’s owners eventually went mad with power, pushing their luck further and further, securing dangerously slippery positions as blackmailers and parlor-room power brokers. Inevitably, their enemies rose up against them, and they fled, disappearing with their fortune.

There was a nasty end to the stories as well, right out of a country parson’s morality tale. The doublet’s owners had all inevitably reappeared out of nowhere, gibbering mad, their fortunes vanished–and the doublet gone as well.

Conor nodded to himself. To Elzevir, he said, “Listen. If Sir Lawrence is as desperate as he seems, there’s a way I can get you out of this.”

Elzevir and his boys looked up hopefully.

Conor grinned his impish Irish grin. “I go to his manor, and kill that ungrateful little noble bastard.”

Elzevir’s face went white. “You can’t mean that! Murderin’ a lord–God almighty, man, we’ll all be hanged!”

“It’ll bring nothing your way, Elzevir. Listen: Sir Lawrence is in debt up to his eyeballs, eh? If it was just his men killed upon the Moor, they’d keep searching your lands until they came up with a culprit. But if I go back, this very night, and I slip into his manor and slay him, the suspicion will fall upon Sir Lawrence himself. Upon his gambling debts, eh? He’s murdered men before, everyone knows it, so you say. So, he finally made a slip, and his enemies got the better of ‘im. Which,” he added, rising, “is precisely what is about to happen.”

Elzevir looked down at the table. His boys, still young enough to be more concerned over getting into trouble than questions of morality, gazed hopefully at him. The shaggy old farmer shook his head. “I wanted no more trouble… no more killin’.”

“And you’ll have no more,” Conor replied, as he grabbed his various weapons. “Not after tonight.”

Reluctantly, Elzevir nodded. “Ar, Sir Lawrence certainly deserves to meet with such a fate.” Wearily, he looked up at Conor. “God forgive ye, sir.”

Conor’s impish grin grew positively demoniac as he stood at the door. “You speak with your own god, Elzevir. I’ve got better Gods watchin’ over me.”

He chuckled as the farmer shuddered, and he and his boys crossed themselves. And then he was out into the dark, and treading fast across the Moor.

#

Following the trail back to the village, he expected the need to hide from the bailiff and his posse at any time. But they never appeared. In the growing light of dawn, with the gentle tolling of the church belfry ringing out over the Moor to call the village to an early mass, Conor found himself within view of Sir Lawrence’s manor house on the village outskirts. He stopped, and wondered a moment that nobody had been his way. Funny. Perhaps the other Moor dwellers had kept to their homes, and ignored the gunfire. But had no one heard the echo? It had been far out upon the Moor, but not that far.

He shrugged, mopped sweat from his still-throbbing head; and, his big-barreled musquetoon in his left hand, he left the road and plunged into the wild grass and heath and low scrub of Dartmoor. To the ordinary man, a hundred pitfalls lay all about the still-murky Moor; to a scouting man like Conor Dubh, they were a hundred places to hide his movements, to break his silhouette. He could not help but smile to himself as he checked his powder, thinking what would be the look on Sir Lawrence’s face when he cracked his hung-over eyelids to see Conor standing over him, the grin of death upon his lips, the big claybeg in his hand.

And then Conor stopped smiling; for he had gotten close enough to see Sir Lawrence’s manor house in detail. And he saw why the bailiff had not investigated the shots.

The back door lay open. A man, one of Sir Lawrence’s gambling friends by the look of him, lay dead across the threshold, in a pool of his own blood. And, as Conor stopped and frowned, he heard the wail of a crying woman.

“Morrígan,” he muttered, “What goes on?”

He rose, and, no longer worrying about stealth, he jogged for the back door. But when he got close enough to see clearly inside, he halted, and his blood ran cold.

The inside of the manor was a unwashed abattoir. Practically every window he looked through showed a scene of gory violence. Servants and guests alike had been chopped to pieces; limbs and heads splayed out at odd angles, broken by some terrific strength.

Conor trudged round to the front of the house, dumbfounded, shaking his head, the musquetoon heavy in his hand. “Name o’ Battle-Crow…”

A bloodcurdling shriek brought him whirling round. The church bell cut off abruptly, as down the road, in the village, a woman screamed as though she were being murdered. He shouldered the musquetoon and raced down the rough dirt track.

The dark and silent village was a blur in the predawn dim as Conor sprinted down the lane. At the end of the village street, a light burned in the church. It was from the open door of the church that the screams were coming, and other shouts full of fear and hate and horror joined her–and within moments, there were crashes, thuds, shattering glass, the sickening shrieks of many men grievously wounded and dying.

Conor cocked and shouldered the musquetoon as he charged through the front door. In the middle of the small country church, amidst a dozen dead men, three of them with snapped blades protruding from their backs, surrounded by bloodied villagers who nursed broken bones and glared at him with a helpless, frightened fury, there stood Sir Lawrence. Blood dripped freely from his gorgeous doublet, from his hands, from his mouth; an insane, diabolic fire raged in his eyes as he looked up with surprise from the girl struggling in his grip.

Conor fired.

Sir Lawrence cried out as the bullet blew a chunk off the top of his skull. He staggered back, dropping the tear-stained girl who crawled away from him and into the arms of her terrified parents. But he did not fall. He laughed, like Satan freed from hell, as he looked back at Conor with his one good eye; and Conor’s stomach turned to see that the wound was already closing. “No matter,” Sir Lawrence said, with an evil purr that was not his own. “I meant to fix that face anyway… it’s a bit boyish for my taste.”

Conor dropped his musquetoon, whipped out both his long-barreled cavalry pistols and aimed for Sir Lawrence’s chest. For he saw now, to his nauseous horror, that it was not the rivulets of blood alone that crawled over the young libertine’s chest. The damned golden brocade was alive, crawling all over him like infernal centipedes.

He fired both pistols, and Sir Lawrence staggered back at the blow; but again he laughed, and stood tall. “Ah!” he cried, “Sir Lawrence thought he’d taken care of you! I’m glad he didn’t…” The thing that wore Sir Lawrence’s flesh–for it was plain enough, it was Sir Lawrence no longer–whipped out a sword that splashed blood from its filthy scabbard, and advanced on Conor. “I could use a good, spirited fight!”

Conor dropped his pistols and whipped out claybeg and dirk. Glowering, he and Sir Lawrence began circling each other round the small church, closing slowly. “Damn those monks for not destroying you when they had you helpless, whatever the hell you be.”

The libertine halted, and cackled. “The monks?! Oh, those monks! Those hypocrite Christians–a pack of would-be sorcerers, they! They tried to pry my secrets from me–tried for a century–!” The crazed mirth disappeared from his face, replaced by a yet madder fury. “A CENTURY!” he bellowed, “A hundred years, locked away in the void! No wine to drink, no food to taste, no flesh to grasp–I am a man of sensuality, I tell you! I cannot live thus!”

He shook his head. “Well, I’m done with subtlety. No mere wearing the flesh of a puppet this time. Now, the world shall know my true might–you shall all learn, once more, to fear the name of Mercurio Borgia!”

Conor grinned the mad grin of the Black Irish. “I name you fool. And nobody’ll fear ya, for I’ll give your void-dark soul to the Tuath Dé.”

The thing which called itself Mercurio Borgia matched Conor’s dark mirth with his own flaming bright mad leer. “Rush in and die, then, dog! I cannot be killed!” And he advanced.

And Conor let him come on.

The villagers scrambled out of the way as the demonic libertine strode up to Conor, smallsword point before him. With an inhuman speed and force, he lunged–and Conor was already out of the way, leaping to balance a moment on the back of a pew as he slashed a huge, heavy tapestry from the wall. Mercurio tried to leap back, too late: the great tapestry came crashing atop him, and the deathless libertine uttered the curses of three centuries and half a dozen languages as the weight bore him momentarily down.

The villagers swarmed to grab the edges of the tapestry and hold him pinned. The monster beneath roared and bucked, struggled to get free; his hands grasped at the thick fabric from beneath and pulled with all his might, but though the massive tapestry groaned and crackled a little at Mercurio’s inhuman strength, even he could not rend it. Mercurio roared again, a sound increasingly inhuman; and the terrified villagers looked as one to Conor as they struggled to keep him trapped, with a question in their eyes: what the Devil do we do with him now?

By way of answer, Conor yanked a candle from the wall and threw it atop the tapestry. He bellowed to the villagers: “Fire, you fools–he can be burned!”

Those who were not fighting to keep Mercurio trapped, sprang into action, yanking the remaining candles from the sconces and the altar. The villagers threw the tallow candles atop Mercurio as he struggled on beneath the mighty tapestry; within moments they were melting and burning furiously. But even as the flames burst to life, the libertine only cursed louder and beat madly and furiously at the tapestry that pinned him down, promising death and malediction to them.

A young boy looked up anxiously at Conor. “Are you sure fire will do it? Our parson tried holy water and a cross upon him, and he lies dead by the altar!”

Conor was already fumbling in his pouches. There–blessed be, he’d kept some on hand after all: a dried out lock of sacred holly, the leaves brown and the juice of the berries all dried up, but maybe, if the Morrígan’s faded shade could yet be roused–

He tossed the dried lock upon the fire. Already Mercurio was beginning to fight his way up the tapestry and free of the blaze. “Stand back,” Conor warned the villagers; and as they dropped the tapestry and shrank back in wonder, he nicked his arms and whetted his steel with blood. Throwing the blades high, he bellowed a prayer, a fistful of savage syllables in an arcane mystic tongue, passed down through generations by the light of flickering altar fires, a prayer that none living outside the clan of the O’Briens Dubh still remembered, a prayer that was a battle-cry in a time when heroes with the blood of gods in their veins fought with bronze spears against the worms of the mounds and the demons from the sea.

And then he shouted: “Tuath Dé! Meat and fat for your fires! Morrígan! A soul, a wicked soul for you to feast upon! We kill, and you feast!”

Nothing happened.

Fear ran cold through Conor’s veins. “MORRÍGAN! A soul of your enemies!” But there was no response. The flames burned as before.

With a mad cackle, Mercurio at last cast the flaming tapestry from a face hideously burned, the flesh crawling nauseously as it reassembled. “You heathen fool!” he cried, “Your gods are long dead! The feeble gods of the Earth are as dust before the wind!” As he threw the flaming tapestry aside and rose triumphant, flames still licking at his half-melted flesh, he shouted, “I spit upon your Morrígan!”

Those last mocking words had not fully left his mouth when a dreadful moaning wind blew through the church. Within a heartbeat it rose to a roaring crescendo, a shout of fury from across worlds and aeons. And as it bellowed, the fire leaped towards Mercurio like a blazing white hand, and Conor staggered back at the searing heat and noise and light that momentarily overwhelmed his senses.

When he was able to look back upon the fire, Mercurio was screaming. The fire had faded from its momentary blaze of white heat; but it had done its work. The brocade was melting, burning itself into Sir Lawrence’s flesh. And as the doublet burned, so Mercurio’s dark soul burned with it.

The Morrígan took her time with him. Long after a man should have expired, even after he could no longer scream with a throat that was a blackened travesty of stinking meat, the thing that had been Mercurio still crawled, scrabbled, thrashed about, leaving behind smeared trails of its own burned grease in its helpless attempt to escape the blaze. And the Morrígan’s flame clung to him, furious, searing away his ancient life, until it had at last drunk up every drop of that mad deathless libertine’s soul.

And then, abruptly, the fire burned out; and the carbonized corpse collapsed into shapeless, reeking ruin.

The people of the village coughed and retched. Most had fled the awful sight and smell of the fire, carrying the wounded with them to safety without the church. Those who had not, stood glowering at the ghastly ruin, and crossed themselves.

One of them, the father of the girl Conor had saved from the libertine’s hands, looked up at the Irishman. “I know not what strange heathenish spirits you called upon,” he said, “But they must be agents of the Lord in truth. That were no earthly fire.”

Wearily, Conor wiped his blades clean. He said nothing. No need to argue the point. He trudged over to the church entrance to retrieve his firearms.

The man called after him, “Are you leaving us, then?”

Conor grunted, “Not just yet,” as he picked up his musquetoon. Cradling it in his left arm, he turned back and grinned at the man. “Sir Lawrence owed me seventy-five pounds. I’ve got to collect before I go…”

He paused. The grin left his face as he looked about the church. Dead men littered the floor. The parson lay crumpled by the altar, his throat slashed.

Conor looked up at the villagers who remained, at those who even now crept back up to peer through the church door. “Y’know,” he said, “I think Sir Lawrence owes you all something as well.”

The father nodded, his face grim. “Ar, ’tis cold comfort as recompense goes. But we’ll take it.”

“Come on, then.” Conor Dubh turned, and, trudging back down the village lane in the growing predawn light, he led the villagers back to Sir Lawrence’s manor house.

And a more orderly act of plundering, a man never did see.

________________________________________

Rev. Joe Kelly is a lover of beer, metal, and horror and fantasy media, top and trash tiers alike. He has been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly (The Linton Banshee, Pagan Fires, Suffer the Witch) and Wyldblood Magazine, and he plans to release his debut cosmic horror period piece novel, Cara Biúllo, this fall. He can be occasionally contacted on Bluesky at @reverendjoefake when he bothers to check it.

Karolína Wellartová is a Czech artist, painter creating images predominantly with the wildlife themes, nature studies and the literary characters. She’s mostly inspired by the curious shapes and a materials from the nature, but the main source still comes from literature.