Seraphim

He leaned forward and gave Tor a reassuring smooth across his withers, then scratched the sensitive spot just below his long feathery mane. “Not yet, my fine one. When this mission is complete, I promise you the freedom you desire. You have served me well over the years; you deserve as much. Mayhaps we shall someday find that which has been lost to you?”

In response, Tor lifted his head and tamped the air with his nose. At the stamp of an agreeing hoof, spray of snow sifted up, coating Dominique’s face with a fine kiss of January cold.

Unseasonable, this heavy snowfall. And the frigid chill. There was something amiss in this fine and darkened moon-glittered world. Since the morn of the New Year, Dominique had felt the odd fissure between nature and the mortal realm. But he could not explain it any more than he could reason his acceptance of this bizarre quest he now found himself embarked upon.

One final mission and then he, too, would find the freedom he desired. The Oracle had promised as much. If that is what the ghostly figment of an innocent-faced boy who had been appearing to him over the past few years really was. Could be a damned ghost, for all Dominique knew. Didn’t resemble any child—living or dead—he had known. Oracle was as good a title as any.

Leaning forward once again Dominique smoothed his palm over the bald spot on Tor’s forehead, reassuring in a manner he knew Tor understood. Perfectly round, the wound never did heal, though it did neither fester. It merely remained pink and moist, as if waiting. Waiting to become whole once again.

“We both seek wholeness,” Dominique whispered, then straightened, and closed his eyes.

Another battle last night. Mastema de Morte had been executed; his troops had retreated behind the safety of twelve-foot-wide battlements. Word told that a mysterious knight clad in black armor had arrived midcombat. Deftly, he’d woven his way through the clashing, battling men, right up to Mastema de Morte. One swift blow had cut through leather coif and flesh and bone to sever the man’s head from his neck. That done, the black knight had turned his mighty black steed and galloped away in the same mysterious manner that he had appeared.

He’d done the same less than a week ago, when Satanas de Morte had laid siege to Corbeil for no more reason beyond boredom and the need to see fresh blood purl down the groove in his sword.

The black knight sounded more myth than legend to Dominique. But he was not the man to dispute the tale. Especially not in these troubled times, when the common man needed a vision of heroics to cling to in the face of certain death.

’Twas rumored the de Mortes served the English king who occupied Paris in his never-ending attempts to possess French soil. The French king, Charles VII, who had been crowned but two years ago thanks to the ill-fated Jeanne d’Arc, had yet to banish all the English from Burgundian France. After almost a century of fighting, these were surely the blackest years yet.

But at this moment in time Dominique did not care for any man other than himself. He was on a mission. The finding of this legend.

Tor’s lead took them dangerously close to the prickles of a bushy gorse. Dominique’s spur caught up on the spiny branches that splayed out over the path. At contact, a cloud of iridescent particles coruscated into the air.

Dominique eased Tor to a stop and dismounted. “Not at all favorable,” he muttered, as he slapped at his left calf with a leather-gloved palm. The platelets scaling the back of his gauntlet chinked with the motion. “It’s been too long.” Another slap released a generous cloud of glitter from his lower leg. The accursed dust permeated all clothing, even his leather boots and braies.

A few stamps of his feet and finally, the last of the renegade particles dispersed. It besprinkled the ground and lay upon the moonlit snow like diamond dust.

He had to be cautious. Dominique was destined for the first tavern that offered fire and food. It wouldn’t do to wander in and seat himself in a dark corner only to begin to coruscate.

Then rationality overtook peevishness. Anger served no man but to draw him farther away from his own soul. Besides, anger was for the dawn.

Drawing in a deep breath of icy air, Dominique lifted his face to the eerie white moon sitting low and fat in the sky. It hung as if a pearl framed between the black iron latticework of a twisted, leafless elm. Midnight. ’Twas the time of the faeries.

The first time he’d ever heard that phrase—the time of the faeries—Dominique had been nursing watered ale in an ash-dusted tavern, sharing a table with a grizzle-bearded old man. With a bristle of his shoulders, and a hearty swallow of his own ale, the man had then nodded toward the door, where the moonlight seeped through cracks in the boards. “’Tis the time of the faeries,” he’d said, as if imparting great wisdom.

And so, Dominique had walked outside, lifted his face to the moon, and had decided that indeed midnight and all its mysterious darkness was a time of magick.

“The stroke of midnight finds the Dragon of the Dawn at his weakest,” Dominique muttered now. He closed his eyes and drew upon the moon’s glow as if it were the sun and cast beams of heat upon his face. “Avoid the dawn. Triumph beneath the moon.”

Seeking to break the cold silence that had settled between the two of them since he’d inadvertently mentioned Sera’s new coif was rather ugly, Baldwin hiked a heel to his mount’s side, and came upon Gryphon. “’Tis magical, no?”

“What? Your amazing ability to irritate?”

“No, my lady, the air, the sky, the—why the moment. Look all around, the moon glimmering upon the snow. ’Tis as if the faeries have danced about and laid their magical dust over all.”

“Speak not to me of the foul creatures,” she snapped.

“Foul—you mean—faeries?”

“There shall be no more talk of such.”

“Very well.” Baldwin smoothed a palm across the saddle pommel. That attempt at lightening the mood had gone over about as well as a cow tiptoeing through a pottery shop.

“They are mischievous, evil creatures,” Sera muttered.

Evil? He’d always thought faeries rather whimsical, fey things. Course, should the abbe Belloc discover he had such thoughts—well, it mattered not anymore. That dream had been dashed on the eve of the New Year.

Baldwin pressed his mount faster so he could hear Sera’s quiet words. She did not pay heed to her own request for silence. “When I was twelve my mother gave birth to my sister, Gossamer.”

He’d not known the d’Anges had another daughter. When Sera was twelve? That would have been, hmm…right around the time Elsbeth d’Ange had taken ill.

“Gossamer was but one month in the cradle when the faeries stole into my mother’s solar under the blackness of midnight and made the switch. A changeling they laid in the soft nest of silk and down where once my sister had cooed.”

Baldwin cringed at Sera’s dour recitation of the word, changeling. The mere thought of such a beast curdled a shiver from his spine up to his earlobes. Everyone knew changelings were hideous, sickly things; far from whimsical.

“The creature lived but a day. My mother was not the same after that. She grieved in silence, would but utter few words. She closed herself from others. I could see her limbs literally begin to curl in on themselves. Until finally she was so crippled she could not take up a needle or even walk without assistance. ’Twas then I took over her duties as chatelaine.”

“I’m so sorry,” Baldwin said, meaning it, and wishing he’d never tried to brighten the mood. Brighten? He’d just snuffed out any light that had existed. There was much he did not know about Seraphim d’Ange.

“No more mention of faeries?”

“Most certainly not—” A glimmer of steel flashed in the squire’s peripheral view. “What is that yonder?”

They came upon a lone rider dismounted at the edge of Pontoise. Moonlight poured over the sharp angles of his face and glittered in the plush snowflakes capping his shoulders.

Sera did quick reconnaissance of the man. Leather jerkin and braies, a grand black wool cloak ornamented with metallic-black stones around the collar. Hematite, she knew, a stone that quickened the blood. A two-handed battle sword and dagger glinted at his hip, both of simple design, with brown suede wrapped about each hilt.

No doubt a knight—no, his spurs were steel, not gold. Perhaps he was a mercenary, looking for his next purse.

“Good eve to you,” Baldwin called, as he and Sera passed by the stranger who had not yet opened his eyes, only appeared to be worshipping the moon. He must have heard their approach.

“It is,” the man finally responded.

Gryphon eased by the man’s white stallion. Seventeen hands for sure, Sera judged the remarkable beast from the added height it grew over Gryphon’s withers. Impressive.

“Headed for Pontoise?”

“If that is the name of yonder village, indeed I am.”

Sera wished the squire were not so friendly with strangers. They could trust no one. But the stranger did no more seem eager to share conversation than she.

As they completely passed him by, she turned at the waist, propped a fist on Gryphon’s hindquarter, and saw he still stood a silent sentinel, his face lifted to worship the moon-glow, his eyes closed.

The beginning of a black beard shadowed his square jaw. The trace of a mustache squared his lips in an inviting frame. Black shoulder-length hair glimmered blue, like Gryphon’s coat, in the eerie midnight illumination. A graceful, yet sharply boned profile, he possessed. Gluttony was not his vice. Perhaps a bit of pride, though. He could be a knight, valorous and brave, for not all wore the gold spurs when not riding in battle.

It might have been the play of moonlight—surely it was—for the man seemed to give off a glow of sorts. It caressed his figure, romancing him in a cocoon of white light.

“Sera?”

Caught in a silly swooning pose, Sera spun around and took up Gryphon’s reins, keeping her sight from what she sensed to be a smirk on the squire’s face. “Onward then,” she said.

But she could not resist twisting at the waist and stealing one final glance at the moon worshipper. And from deep inside her scarred and damaged being, the damsel she had once been emerged—and sighed.

TWO

“Bertrand, what say you?” Sera dangled a chunk of stringy brown food above her trencher, imploring the squire to comment.

“It is meat.” Her traveling partner shoved another piece of the greasy fare into his mouth. Whenever they came upon food he became focused and voracious in his endeavor to fill his belly.

“Aye, but what sort?” Pressing her lips together in consternation, Sera turned the meat this way and that. “I cannot determine, there is so much salt.”

“Most likely venison,” the squire muttered through a slobber of watered ale. “But say naught, for the king’s men could be within hearing distance.”

“Yes, but which king?” She prodded the remainder of her trencher with a fingertip, wincing at thought of consuming such unremarkable fodder. All her life she’d eaten her meals from plates. Oftentimes a fine silver fork had been provided, as well. This salted, stale, indeterminable fare she’d seen over the past week was enough to make one’s stomach close up and choose starvation over death by disgust.

“Certainly, it is not what you are accustomed to, my lord.” The squire was not one to disguise his frequent bouts of sarcasm. Not one of the reasons Sera had elected to have him accompany her on this quest. “You always receive the finest cuts, while the lower table is given this salted ferment, or if we are lucky, your table scraps.”

“Bernard, I’m sorry—”

“It is Baldwin,” he hissed, spattering his own trencher with spit. “And if you do not wish your portion then I shall gladly consume such, for I fear it will be another full day before we again stop to fill our bellies.”

If all went well. Sera figured a two-day journey to Creil. Tonight they would rest, then greet the dawn and ride the entire day through by following the winding Seine. It was critical they reach Creil as quickly as possible. No doubt word of Mastema’s death already beat a sweating horse’s trail to Abaddon’s ears. She did not want to give him more time than necessary to prepare.

“So, is it mine?”

A glance to Baldwin’s finger-pocked trencher found it bare of meat and gravy. At that moment Sera’s stomach moaned in protest. She had not been eating well, could feel it in the lightheadedness that accompanied her yowling innards. With three of the five de Mortes left to hunt down she must keep her wits about her, and her strength. This bitter battle must be fought—or die.

She bit into the hard chunk of salted deer. All she could do was offer a negative nod, for she suspected this small morsel would need a good chewing.

“I do believe we are on Charles VII’s land,” Baldwin added quietly. “That damned English king holds but Paris now, does he not?”

“Aye, the bastard,” Sera muttered, equally as quiet. ’Twas difficult to know who was one’s enemy with the English occupying Paris. Many a Frenchman had deserted and gone to serve Henri VI. They craved the organization and rumored frequent pay dates that were quite the rarity in the French musters.

Never, Sera thought to herself. I shall serve my homeland until I die. As had her father and her brother.

Fact was, Lucifer de Morte was allied with the English king. Another good reason to take his head.

“Ah, there,” Baldwin whispered. “Yonder comes your moonlight knight.”

“Do not speak so loud,” she muttered. A glance to the tavern door witnessed the cloaked stranger stroll in with but a nod to the barkeep and a cursory scan of the room. “You will raise suspicion.”

“What suspicion worries you? That my lord was romancing over another knight?”

“Baldwin!”

“Ah, so she does know my name. When it serves her authority.”

“Enough.” Sera lifted the pewter tankard to her lips and forced a swallow down her throat. While the watered-down spirits were anything but appetizing, just the feel of the cold liquid running down her wounded throat alleviated the haunting pain.

The large vessel also blocked the moonlight knight’s view of her face as he strode by the long trestle table where she and Baldwin sat across from a half dozen dirty-faced men.

The man sought out a lone chair at the back of the tavern. There in the darkness, a single candle set into an iron sconce shone upon his face and the scaled-armor gauntlets he tossed on the table before him. A serving wench, thin brown hair tucked up with a few pins, limped over to his side and, with a few exchanged words that Sera could not hear, she then wobbled away to retrieve—most likely—more inedible meat.

In the main room of the tavern, two knights who had been quietly exchanging defense instruction, now clanged weapons in a good-natured display of method. Metal rivets studded the leather jerkin of the barrel-chested fighter and clinked with the misplaced touch of a sword. The moonlight knight didn’t pay them a glance. Instead, his dark velvet eyes remained fixed on…Sera.

She quickly looked away and drew a finger along her crusted trencher, as if the food now promised great gastronomic delight. “He’s looking at us,” she hissed to the squire.

Baldwin, already breaking his rye trencher in half and preparing to devour that as well, glanced to the dark recess at the back of the tavern, making great display in turning his body completely, so anyone who might be looking would know his intentions.

“Don’t do that,” she pleaded hoarsely.

“He’s not looking at us,” Baldwin replied around a bite of bread. “He’s looking at you.”

“Me? N-no. Really?” The damask- and silk-clad damsel that Sera had been but a week earlier shivered beneath the chain mail and scars and butchered coif. To capture the eye of such a dashing man—was no longer thinkable. “Let’s be off, Bertrand.”

“I’m not finished.”

“Finish it in the stables. Our horses need tending.” She stood, but the squire made it clear he had no intention of moving until every last crumb of the gravy-soaked trencher swam in his gut.

Sera cast a sideways glance toward the knight sitting in the darkness. He inclined his head in acknowledgment at the pair.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Baldwin wondered.

“I did nod,” she lied. “Hurry. Methinks you are making me wait apurpose.”

“Dominique San Juste!” A gray-bearded man, dressed in olive hosen and wool cloak, crossed the room and set his tankard on the table before the moonlight knight.

Dominique? Sera toyed with the name in her mind as she placed a hand on Baldwin’s shoulder, staying him for the moment. ’Twas a fine enough name, honorable, elegant and…beguiling.

The one who’d called out the name was a burly old man with young blue eyes flashing above his long beard. A scar pinched the corner of his left eye shut and dipped to his nose. ’Twas a match to the scar that puckered the flesh on Sera’s throat.

“Good to see your ugly face again, man.”

Sera had to close her eyes and concentrate most fiercely to hear Dominique’s reply.

“You say Abaddon de Morte has plans to ride on Clermont in two days?”

“That was the word that blows on the wind,” the scarred man said. “Was, that is. There’s serious doubt the Demon of the North will leave his lair now with half his numbers obliterated by the black knight. They had been sent to aid Mastema’s siege, and did but a handful return to their master.”

“Ah yes, the infamous black knight. You wager he has set the rest of the de Mortes to a cowardly shiver behind their castle walls?”

The bearded man shrugged, scratched his generous belly. “Abaddon’s the biggest and strongest of them all. If any of the de Mortes were to stand off a single, armored man, it would be him. Though rumor tells Lucifer has hired a mercenary to stalk the black knight and cut him down before Abaddon need worry of breaking a sweat.”

“A mercenary? Lucifer not up to the task himself?”

“Perhaps shivering like a coward in his stinking lair. The black knight is a force! They say he rides into battle on his great dragon of a steed, the beast blowing smoke from its nostrils.”

Dominique waved his hand dismissively. Sera did not miss the mocking gesture. “Gossip tends to grow a man’s muscles tenfold and his amours by many hundreds,” he said.

“Aye, but the black knight swung his sword and severed Mastema de Morte’s head from his body with one swift and mighty blow.”

Baldwin shot up like a rabbit bit in the tail by a curious mastiff. He pressed his hooded visage close to Sera’s face. “You severed the man’s head?”

Sera looked away from the greasy-faced squire, zoning in on Dominique San Juste’s furrowed brow. The beguiling knight took great humor in listening to the man’s tale. He didn’t believe a word of it, she could fathom as much from the smile that wriggled his lips. Such white teeth beneath the thin black mustache. Captivating, in a most alarming way.

A hand clamped over her wrist, forcing Sera to redirect her attention. “You cut off the man’s head?”

She shrugged out of Baldwin’s greasy clutch and whispered, “So?”

Taking the eyeshot of a nearby traveler as warning she might speak too loudly and reveal more than she wished, Sera turned and stalked out of the tavern, followed closely by Baldwin. The slam of the heavy wood door released a mist of snowflakes upon their heads.

Baldwin skittered up on Sera’s heels, her pace intent for the stables. “That’s so…so…barbaric!”

She raised a brow, smirked, but did not slow her pace.

“That’s not you, you’re not that—bloody saints!—wicked!”

“I was mounted in the midst of battle,” she hissed under her breath. “The man needed to be taken down. I did what was necessary.”

He gained her side, a sad shake flapping the ragged wool hood on his head back and forth over his still-chewing cheeks. “You’re changing, Seraphim. This is no life for a woman.”

“You are not my lord and master, Bernard.”

Breathing in a deep breath, Sera put the squire’s comments from her thoughts. It would not do to think on what was wrong with her life. Only, she must focus on what must be done to avenge her family. With that vengeance would come peace for many thousands of French villagers who every day suffered at the hands of the de Mortes. The villains raped and pillaged and burned for reasons no more obvious than that of their own twisted pleasure.

For each de Morte slain, dozens of families would benefit.

The chill of nightfall slipped between her cheek and the rabbit fur lining her hood. Sera shook off a shiver and strode through muck of mud and snow to the stable.

Here in the stables it was warm, dank, and sweet with hay and animal-scent. Gryphon nuzzled into her cupped palm. Sera did the same against the magnificent beast’s warm neck. She slipped a hand over the knobby row of witch knots that Antoine kept braided into the glossy black mane. Fond memories of helping Antoine feed the horses and oxen early each morning before the sun broke the horizon filled Sera’s thoughts.

She recalled her insistent daily question to her brother. “When will you let me ride Gryphon?”

Antoine would always smile his wide, devil-take-me smile and chuck a knuckle under her chin. “You do have a way with Gryphon, I can see that. This beast won’t allow any but the two of us to touch him without putting up a raging fuss.”

“Today then?” she’d eagerly wonder, her fingers already curling around the saddle horn in preparation to mount.

“Soon,” Antoine would always say.

And Sera’s hopes would wilt. She knew he hadn’t been ready to share with her his one private passion. For she shared his every other passion, such as sword-fight, tending honor through patience and diligence, and respect for their parents.

“You were good for him,” she whispered now against Gryphon’s smooth black coat. She drew her fingers over the silky and thick hide, shimmery in the rush-light glow. “I know you miss him, but you serve your former master well in allowing me to ride you now. Thank you, Gryphon. Together we will avenge my family’s cruel demise.”

“Not if you insist upon such theatrics.” The squire’s voice echoed in from the stable doors. “Riding into the midst of battle on your great and fiery dragon-steed? A swing of your sword decapitating the enemy? Sera!”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She pat Gryphon’s rear flank and picked up a curry comb that hung from an iron hook on the wall. The horse bristled his coat as she smoothed vigorously over it with the brush. “You may leave my service if you wish.”

“I—your serv—” He struggled to place his tongue on the words.

Sera knew the man had nowhere else to go. He was hopelessly lost when it came to religious pursuits. And toad-eaters were certainly out of vogue.

With a curt straightening of his shoulders and a proud thrust of his chin, Baldwin replied, “I would never.”

“Then silence your objections from this day forth. Do you understand?”

Baldwin Ortolano, tall and slim, his hands and wrists jutting way beyond the hem of his borrowed shirtsleeves, merely nodded, defeated. “I fear my attempts to cease uttering oaths may have to be renewed should I remain by your side.”

“It is not me you must answer to in your final days,” she said. The curry comb skimmed through Gryphon’s sleek hide, warming her fingertips with the brisk motion.

“You would do well to remember the same,” he said.

The fine wire brush stopped on a glossy patch of hide. When her final day did come Sera knew exactly who would ask of her mortal sins. And she did not fear Him. She could not. She was doing the right thing. So many lives would be spared with the swing of her sword.

Though, she sensed there was a deeper reason she had taken on the quest. But that reason was not immediately to hand. Normal females did not take to the sword to sever heads. What was she doing? There was no doubt she had not a clue beyond that she was angry. On the other hand, ’twas very much…a compulsion to battle. She knew not why, only that the rage that boiled within pushed her. Enticed her forward. Someone had to put an end to the de Mortes’ reign of terror.