Shadows & Sorcery #176
It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s raining, and I am howling with horror to the heavens—which means it’s time for a new edition of the nation’s favourite fantasy flash fiction, uh, publication, Shadows & Sorcery!
A few weeks back, I was messing around on Bluesky (where you can read my horrible posts) trying to brainstorm the most laughably Grimdark Medieval European setting imaginable. We had some fun back and forths, and this edition is the ultimate result of that. The dung economy, draconic body horror, and conscript soldiers squatting in muddy corpse-strewn fields abound. This edition was written exclusively to Dark Ages’ Twilight of Europe and Tormentor’s Anno Domini (especially the final track, on loop, ANNO DOMINI!!!!!), so line ‘em up and get to reading.
If you missed (or just didn’t get to read) last week’s rather offbeat memorial edition dedicated to my dear little cat Deebs, you can, should, must, and will check that out right here
And of course, please leave a like—let the stories know you enjoyed them!
This week, we join three conscripted soldiers marching to war as they encounter a Shadow of the Dead, as they are led in prayer to the War Saint, and as they seek out the Castle of the Lost…
Shadow of the Dead
Three conscripts passed through a forest. Above, sickly beams of dying sunlight filtered through a black, heavy canopy to show, drifting in a thin wind, the faint remnants of old nooses hanging from snaking boughs. Below, cold, damp air seeped through the tight, huddling, rotten trunks, and the sharp stench of mold slithered in misty tendrils over a dark, squelching mud. The bottoms of their cloaks were stained from being dragged through a league of filth, and frayed from the thorns and thickets and frigid nights used as bedding, but they trapped better the warmth than the thin-belted, damp tunics that clung to their shivering skin, or the wood-soled hosen fastened with ragged strips of linen pilfered from the dead.
Behind them, the cacophany of the rickety old cart that had dragged their meagre goods across three petty kingdoms. The forest closed in around them, the air itself like held breath, straining. Every creak and clack of wood was like a signal horn. Heavy drops of filthy grey water fell from the shadowy mass above, each splash sounding more like a series of cautious, shuffling steps than the threatened downpour. One track ran through these woods which congregated at the base of a dark valley on the fringes of a minor kingdom looking its death in the eyes.
The precious dung in the cart was beginning to ferment heavily, juices were seeping out from within the barrel, and there was an effect in the air around it as of a heat shimmer—indeed, dung began to grow hot as it rotted. No better place in winter than a dung shed, that they knew from their upbringing. This was prime stuff and would fetch a goodly amount of drink in the camp should it be headed by a royal man and not a holy man. They'd suffered the invasive and painful inspections of two inquisitions already for signs of drink and fornication. Didn't find any, of course. Because they had, as yet, no drink.
Each mind was snapped out of its numbing rumination—the crack of a twig, or a bone. Somewhere off to the left? The pad of feet in forest floor mulch. Oh no. Saints—Angel—God—please, not this. Suddenly, a crash, a rush, darting shadows, then hissing breath, stifled gasps, the flash of steel. A filth-caked face was thrust into one of the conscripts: cracked lips showed yellowed teeth in dark, receding gums which grimaced from behind the open slit in a kind of red hood or mask. The eyes could not be seen through the roughly cut holes, but there was the musty stink of plague off of them. A tongue could be seen searching around the open mouth, trying to find the right place to start speaking.
"Th' blood...fer th' fiend...FER TH' FIEND!" the rasping voice howled as it held high a wicked sword bearing no mark of the swordsmith's art—it was little more than a short slab of steel with a crude edge. There were at least five of these things one could barely call men, who it had become clear were in league with the blood-thirsting Fiend. And in these lands, so bloodsoaked, the Fiend was everywhere, in every thing, and in every one.
And yet, there was nothing of exultation in the bandit's voice. Indeed, the conscript thought, in that wordless, idle, unconscious way one sometimes perceives and processes things in a moment of panic or crisis, the fellow sounded absolutely terrified. An ugly, wet, sucked-in gasp and gurgle issued from behind the conscript. The bandit's face darted beyond for just a second. Spilling blood for the Fiend—the blood of his comrade, the conscript knew and accepted—but for what? Surely they were not so fallen as to be devil worshippers? No, this was something else. The conscript got a good idea of just what it was as something seemed to slither around a tree trunk off to the left.
Death, the priests said in mournful timbre, was a state of torment. The best the dead and their bereaved could hope for was a cold and dreamless slumber, to be guarded at all times and at all costs, for it was a light and fitful slumber. Whether it be a yearning for warmth, to grasp at life once more, to seek vengeance, or merely to lash out, beast-like, any guess was as good as another, but so it was that the built-up bits of a person that persisted, that were called shaded, stirred and rose from the black earth at the merest hint of agitation. All the more so should their burial grounds be the shallow graves of a bandit forest.
The raw soul of man was hideous to behold, true enough. It wasn't right to see the sin-weighted refuse of life, a weak and airy thing what ought to fester back into nothingness in the grave, rake its fingers across the exposed skin, eliciting choked grimaces, and take hold, the hollow, gaping maw, toothless and tongueless, gasping soundlessly the way a fish out of water gasps, as it clamps down and takes the bandit half into the earth with it. All the more horrible when a shivering crowd of them, thin limbs of hanging skin emerging from torn black shrouds, shamble from the treeline and sink into the seeping loam with what can be plainly guessed to be their killers.
Two conscripts emerged from those woods with nary a scrap of dung to their name, but a tale that might buy a drink to pass what was going to be a hungry night away.
War Saint
The sky was all low ripples of dappled, stained grey. In fact, it seemed like it might have been sinking, slowly, lower and lower until it might suddenly fall and smother the whole of the world. The rain had been falling in a very light but unceasing drizzle, these thin, flimsy sheets of dampness that were torn and cast about on even the faintest breeze. It made the cold and the wet settle upon and sink into everything. The two conscripts, now soldiers, who squatted under their meagre cloaks felt as if it had softened their very flesh, and that when they rose to march to the slaughter, their bones would turn to mush, and they'd fall into the dirt to be trampled by the dark forms who themselves squatted not too far away down the decline, probably thinking the same thing.
In their hands were the tools of their trades: anything but real weapons. They themselves had some rather long daggers which approached being the real thing, but they were suited more for skinning and gutting rather than finding gaps in armour. There were retooled farming implements, mostly scythes and pitchforks which, in truth, were deadly enough already, but even the odd cattle brand could be seen, a decent low surface blunt striking weapon. Among others could be seen shovels that had been hammered flat like absurd battle axes, as well as simple lumpen mallets for crushing bones. On some arms were lengths of wood with half-rotten rope grips to serve as shields. In place of armour were layers of thicker linen and misshapen leather plates, studded into coats. About five men—the "commanders" as it were—bore old, battered kettle helmets.
And then, there was the knight who rode through them, his steed a hideous thing with eyes like blobs of blood staring from behind its blinders, snorting steam, the muscles of its legs rippling with each step into the mulch and mud, its lips pulled back in a sneer. The knight's red surcoat, sewn with black dragon emblems, was surmounted by a snouted houndskull helmet with long wings that stuck out either side. His eyes could not be seen within. From the surcoat there also emerged an arm clad in rumpled chainmail that ended in a darkish gauntlet that rested on the triangular pommel of a longsword. He was riding forward to the front of the conscripted rabble, where a priest knelt.
The holy man was facing a thing consisting of two tall, arched wooden plates covered in the gilded, painted faces of saints, and a wooden stand upon which was a massive open book, its sacred syllables that the chantry still knew how to speak, but had long ago forgotten how to read. It was from the old, old days of glorious, opulent, infernal empires fuelled by spilled blood to the Fiend, which the Angel's appearance put an end to. The top half of the priest's grey robes were pulled down, and upon his back were long scores and scabs, some of which still trickled blood. The knight had requested him in particular for his devotion to mortification, the pain from which drove away all other thoughts and sensations, allowing one to reach ecstatic states. He could call to the saints most clearly like this, and thus to the Angel, and thus, to God.
The saints looked down upon the poor old madman with the glazed, unfocused eyes of the dead. They were dead, all of them, but they had, in life, received blessings directly from God after deep and profound prayer—of what kind it didn't matter, they were blessed, and almost certainly put to death in holy martyrdom immediately after to preserve their sanctity. Everyone had their favourite martyr tale, and the chantry encouraged it. Every soldier on that field did. Those blessings made the greatest mark of all upon the shade they would leave behind. There was no more sacred and noble an end to a life than for one's shade to be book-ended with a blessing, to be called upon forever afterwards to administer it, and pray at the behest of all who call upon you, without rest.
The priest was chanting a name. A few of the soldiers had heard it before, on other battlefields. It was a war saint, Grauburgevald Eucephalus, who received a blessing from God in the midst of the finale of a siege, in which the invading force finally broke into the stone keep where he was peppered with arrows, then stabbed and clubbed in one mad rush, and while he was thoroughly murdered, his head remained miraculously untouched and continued to issue orders to his remaining men who, apparently, held off the haggard attackers with walls of corpses and arrows plucked from the freshly sainted man-at-arms.
As the priest finished his warbling invocation in those ancient, esoteric syllables, he picked up his scourge and began to beat himself anew, while the knight gave a sharp whistle, and the conscripts each privately thought that perhaps they'd be plucking arrows out of that handsome surcoat and the wiry flesh beneath it.
Castle of the Lost
The peddlers and whores, free to move from camp to camp, had passed on the word that morale was low on the other side. Now that didn't mean they would bolt or fall easy, rather their lord would whip them into a frenzy—indeed, he'd been doing so, and so they'd crept on over here, where it didn't seem so much like it was about to turn bad. At least not yet.
And it was during the first crash that the two conscripts saw the bad news for themselves, and ducked out as the waves held fast for a short moment, each force getting its bearing from the initial assault, the knights charging in screaming insults to each other's blood. There was scrubland that exploded into wild dark heather and then trees to the west, and that's where they fled in the chaos of that first meeting, as bodies crashed and dropped and staggered and stood straining to kill. They ran in a wedge, not together, zig-zagging into and through enemies and allies, and met crouching amidst the somnolent scent of the heather.
There was one other thing that was brought over from the other camp: mutterings of a way out, a safe haven, an oasis for the lost and the damned, for outlaws and deserters and such, that lay in a hazy no-man's land beyond the black waters, unclaimed by any kingdom. And in a fractious, mercurial land such as this, that was saying something.
The sky grew darker the further out they went, the clouds thickening, gathering, but the light never failed, not completely. It just grew more and more tired. Through lonely rises of thickets did they creep, keeping to the shadows of low trees that stood out on the hillside and declines, over mouldering stone footbridges that arched across mist-laden waters, past smatterings of farmhouses that huddled together under craggy outcroppings, and through thin glades where their hearts quickened at the furtive shadows that darted away at their coming. The sound of the battle had died away fairly quickly, but it remained in their heads long afterwards. They had known a few of the soldiers there. They hushed the thought from their heads if, perhaps, any of those soldiers wondered where their friends were. If they worried. If they were dead now because the two had fled.
The price for these thoughts and actions under the eyes of God was blood, and when the tree-studded ridge beyond the black-watered river was crested, there was but one left. Pressing up against a thick-boled tree, he threw his gaze down over the broad expanse, to the castle below. He did not expect it to be a hive of activity, to have shouts and cheers and roars calling him to a place of sanctuary, but still, he expected to see something. Smoke rose from the bailey, and the motte beyond, that even he, with his meagre experience, knew wasn't right.
It could have happened in the last few days, maybe. Could be some king's men finally got to it, which, if that was the case, was a shame. But it was better shelter than nothing, and could be they left something behind to scrounge, to eat, to sell. When he got into the bailey, he had to pass a number of corpses. All of them were strewn about, torn apart, the gore was worse than usual, not cruel in the way men kill men, but savage, furious. The gate to the bailey was open—smashed in, from the outside. So then there was some kind of attack. The bare earth within was sodden and muddy from unceasing rain, strewn with yet even more dead, and utterly ruined. But the gouges, rents, and craters didn't seem quite like the marks of siege weapons. They couldn't be. If so, it meant the attacking force had wheeled their siege engines all the way out here, attacked, and then left rather quickly, not staying to secure the place like anyone else would. And if that was the case, where were the wheel marks? Boot and hoof prints which should be still be evident? Nothing. Some foot marks, yes, but mostly just long dragging, winding rents and gouges.
The chapel, off to the left side of the bailey, on a little raised mound, was a pile of rubble. He only knew it was such because of some of the woodwork that stuck out of the stone he investigated. Off to the right, things he understood to be the barracks, the smith, the storehouse—everything else in the wide courtyard was still wreathed in slowly rising smoke, black and oily. The place was utterly silent. He knew he should leave, but he refused to admit it.
There was something else, though, which just about made him bolt for the hills.
It was long, squamous flesh mottled brown and green, and covered in bits of stringy, matted hair. For all it was large, it seemed, in some way that he couldn't really place, terribly withered. Its two limbs looked twisted about, as if reshaped to move in a way that was not natural to it. Splayed fingers, for they resembled such, ended in curling talons. Its face was like a beaked, hairless wolf with fins and a goat's horns. The long body trailed off into a contorted, knotted, taut cord-like tail. It was stuck with some two dozen blades, axes, pikes, and even wooden stakes. He felt then that he knew exactly what had made all those corpses, all those marks in the mud, and all that smoke.
The gate to the motte and keep were open, but not smashed in. So, the dragon hadn't gotten that far. Could be there were survivors in there. In what condition, and if they were accepting new entrants, could be only guessed. But he was an able enough hand to move corpses, and that might buy him a place. There was a chance they were celebrating their victory. Might make their moods more amenable. There might be a fire. Food. Drink. But something about the terse stillness of the air, and then the smears of blood on the palisade wall and motte gateway, and then the half-ajar keep door, and then the sounds issuing from within, made him think otherwise.
He had spent a stint starving in a lord's dungeons as a prisoner of war, the place they throw you in while they figure out what to do with you, or where you might be kept if you were just valuable enough as bargaining chip. He had heard sounds in that dungeon that had returned to him time and again in quiet moments and sober nights. He felt they just been ousted and replaced by a sound and vision of something far worse. Seeing what might have been a human form, stretched and elongated, bleeding, bulging, and screaming froth through a torn throat, for a bare few seconds was enough. Seeing it turn its beaked, canine snout topped by an unmistakably human set of eyes while talons slid forth from misshapen, out-held fingers, was far, far too much for any person to reasonably handle.
Sod this, he'd have a better chance freezing on some moorland than staying here.
War Saint is a good title!