Worlds That Weren't

“They’ll be pleased when they get here,” Guillaume’s gruff voice said behind her. “The Beys. She looks one tough bitch, too.”

“They used to burn their firstborn sons as sacrifices to her,” the Frenchman, Bressac, added. “ What? What did I say?”

“I’m going back to my tent,” Yolande said. “Guillaume, if you don’t mind, I’ll give you the cloak back in the morning.”

Guillaume Arnisout slipped out in the early morning for his ablutions.

If I move fast, I can call on Yolande before rollcall…

It was just after dawn. The air was still cool. He picked his way among the thousands of guy ropes spider-webbing between squad tents. A few early risers sat, shoulders hunched, persuading camp fires to light. Moisture kept the dust underfoot from rising as his boots hit the dirt. He scratched in the roots of his hair as he walked down past the side of the monks’ compound to the lavatory.

It was a knock-together affair-whatever the Arian monks were, they weren’t carpenters. A long shack was built down the far side of the compound on the top of a low ridge, so that the night soil could fall down into the ditch behind, where it could be collected to put on the strip fields later.

Best of luck with mine, Guillaume thought sardonically. Usually, with the wine in these parts, I could do it through the eye of a cobbler’s needle. Now? You could load it into a swivel gun and shoot it clear through a castle wall…

The lavatories were arranged on the old Punic model: a row of holes cut into wooden planks, and a sponge in a vinegar bowl. With a sigh, Guillaume pulled the lacing of his Italian doublet undone. He slid doublet and hose down in one piece, to save untying the points at his waist that joined them together. Slipping his braies down, he sat. The morning air was pleasant, cool with just his shirt covering his torso.

So-am I going to make my approach to Yolande? Because I think the door is unbarred. I think so…

He sat peacefully undisturbed for a number of minutes, having the place to himself. He listened to the clatter of pans from the monks’ kitchen, and heard a rustling of rats here and there across the courtyard and below him in the ditch. There was more movement now the sun was up, but this yard remained deserted.

Abbot Muthari and his monks rang for service every hour through the night. They can’t keep that up; they’re bound to quit today and plant her…she’s starting to leak over the floor.

If it was me, I wouldn’t worry about a dead archer, no matter how smelly she’s getting. I’d worry about the live archer. Two visions! You can’t tell me she didn’t have another one, in the chapel. I need to get ’Lande away from that damned kid…

“Ah, Dieux!” Guillaume folded his arms across his belly and bent forward a little to alleviate his sudden cramp. A spasm eased him. He sighed with happiness, feeling his body begin another.

A cold, hard object suddenly shoved up against his dilated anus.

It hit with surprising force, lifting him an inch off the plank. Before he could react in any way, something warm and wet wiped itself almost instantaneously from his scrotum down the crack of his arse, and finished at his anus again.

He was not conscious that he screamed, or that his flesh puckered up and shut in a fraction of a second. The next thing he knew, he was hopping out into the courtyard, his hose trapped around his ankles, hobbling him, and the rest of his clothes pulling behind him through the dust.

“It’s a demon!” he shrieked. “It’s a demon! I felt teeth! ”

Two monks came running up at the same time as Bressac and one of the company’s artillerymen.

“What?” Bressac yelled. “Gil!”

His shirt was caught under his armpits and the wind blew chill across his bare arse.

I knew we shouldn’t have left an unblessed corpse in a chapel, I knew it, I knew it!

“It’s a demon!”

“Where?” The foremost monk grabbed Guillaume by the arm. It was the abbot, Muthari, his liquid eyes alert. “ Where is this demon?”

“Down the goddamned shit-hole!”

The abbot goggled. “Where?”

“Fucking thing tried to climb up my arse!” Guillaume bellowed, hauling hopelessly at his tangled hose. He gave up, grabbed the abbot by the arm, and hobbled back across the courtyard toward the long shed. “You’re a fucking monastery! You didn’t ought to have demons in the lavatory!”

Once under the tiled roof, the abbot pulled his arm out of Guillaume’s grip. Guillaume glared, breathless. The abbot leaned a hand against the wooden pillar that supported the lavatory’s roof, and peered down the hole. His shoulders convulsed under his robe. For a split second Guillaume thought the monk was becoming possessed.