Chapter Eleven

The wall walk archers lit extra torches lining the castle’s front curtain wall and poked their heads between the battlement crenels to scour the moat.

“Lots of good the torches do us up here,” Franco, the castle’s burgmann and best bowman, said before spitting a gob of tobacco in the moat. “We can see shit up here but none of the shit down there.”

“Maybe the moonlight will help.” Otto, his neck and cheek wounds salved with a mix of yarrow and myrrh and bandaged in linen, gazed at a white moon illuminating the castle in a silver glow—only to be dimmed by hulking black clouds drifting across the sky.

“Let’s get on with it then,” Franco said. “Archers, draw!”

Twenty-four archers stretched across the wall walk, two to a crenel, aimed at all parts of the moat. “Lower the bridge!” Franco yelled.

The wooden door yawned to a stop and out scurried four cottars, the lowest-ranking castle employees—each with a torch in one shaky hand, a pike in the other. They spread out, lowering the torches to the moat to look for a floating body.

“Three men up here witnessed that thing whipping the hag into the moat,” Franco told Otto. “They’ve not taken their eyes off the spot where she splashed down. She went under and did not come out.”

Vettelberg Castle was specifically built atop a massive rock surrounded by an O-shaped ditch that made for a natural moat. A mix of water and waste filled half of the twenty-feet-deep ditch, whose edges stood ten feet above the murk’s surface, making it near impossible for attackers to pull themselves up and out. Even if they managed to escape on the castle’s side of the moat, they had only ten feet of rocky space to maneuver, nowhere near enough room to queue forces.

The cottars, whose duties included removing waste from the moat when the stench became too powerful, now dipped their heads uncomfortably close to the watery filth, hoping, praying they could somehow see a body that could be pulled out with pikes.

“Could she have swum around, maybe snuck out on another side of the castle?” Otto said.

“We’ve been watching all sides of the castle—we’d have seen her,” Franco said.

“Then she’s down there.”

One cottar, dressed in a ragged tunic not warm enough for the cold, handed his torch to a fellow flunky, who dropped his pike to hold two torches. The first cottar stuck his long pike into the moat, poking around, jabbing for the hag.

“Work your way right to circle the castle,” Franco called to them. “We’ll keep watch on the areas you’ve covered.”

They wordlessly acquiesced and continued their dirty work.

“If your men saw the hag fall into the moat, then they certainly saw what sent her there,” Otto said.

Franco, watching the cottars while addressing Otto, knew not to be flippant with the giant knight for fear that doing so would mean joining the hag at the moat’s bottom.

“This devil-man with the chain, yes—he turned tail and retreated for the forest. We’ve not seen him since.”

“Do you believe me? Do your men believe what they saw?”

“My men witnessed something that was somehow bigger than you whip that witch into that mire. I can’t say what exactly they saw because I wasn’t present. I don’t doubt that you saw a man covered with furs.”

“Then why the antlers, the horns?” Otto said.

“I’ve got something!” one of the cottars yelled, sparing Franco from having to answer.

“What is it?” the burgmann said.

“A body, it must be!” answered Fritz, the cottar whose pike touched on something soft and lumpy. While his long weapon had a spear tip, it also featured a sharp hook curved toward the wielder. Fritz fidgeted the hook to snag clothing or a rib or a sturdy body part.

The young cottar gulped when the mass jiggled the prodding pike tip. The three remaining cottars joined Fritz. Two held torches while the third man used his pike to help Fritz hook and haul.

The hook caught hold of something.

“Got it,” Fritz said. Maybe I looped the hook under the armpit? he thought. He tightened his grip and stepped backward, straining to lift the mass to surface.

Fritz inhaled, his jaw trembling. Whatever he’d snagged squeezed the pike’s shaft and jerked it into the moat. The other men saw him lurch forward.

“Don’t be such a bed wetter!” Fritz heard the jibe from above. “It’s an old woman! Lift her, damn it!”

“Maybe it’s a snake,” Fritz said. The cottars noticed a quiver in his voice. “Yes, a snake has slithered around the pole, upset that I’m taking away its dinner.”

The torchlight illuminating where the pole breached the murk showed only slight ripples as Fritz tried easing up his catch. Then the pole spasmed.

“It’s alive!”

The archers—a few of the nervous ones, anyway—released arrows into the moat.

“Hold your fire!” Franco said, and then to the second pike-wielding cottar, “Help him!”

The second man dropped his weapon and grabbed part of Fritz’s pike. Now the two men played tug–of–war with the unseen. But both felt the bending and crunching of wood, and then they fell backward, bringing with them a broken pike, the spear and hook snapped from the shaft.

She exploded from the moat and corkscrewed to send filth in every direction, to repulse whoever it hit. She eyed the cottars at her apex and threw the pike’s blade into Fritz’s diaphragm. He collapsed, grotesquely gasping, while the other three cottars retreated across drawbridge for the castle’s protection. Perchta landed opposite the castle, next to Fritz’s writhing body. She glowered at the bewildered archers aiming at her. Brown sludge oozed its way down her face’s wrinkles, filling them like water down dry river arteries.

“Fire!”

Arrows flitted toward her throat and stomach, but she was too quick and bolted toward the forest.

“Your castle will fall!” she shrieked. And was gone.

The archers looked at where their arrows had accidentally finished off Fritz and couldn’t comprehend how quickly the old woman had moved.

“Raise the drawbridge!” Franco ordered.

Every guard, regardless of their stations along the wall walks or in the castle proper, turned toward the commotion.

The monster had counted on that. He hid in a grove near the castle’s side, where the darkest shadow had been cast, and ran the moment the guards glanced toward the sounds of a screaming woman bent on destroying Vettelberg.