Chapter 1
A Knight Away from Home
The room was small. All rooms in Genova were small. The sunlight here was scarce and disrupted. A clear view of the skies was unheard of for common folk. But the hands through which the wealth trickled were held tight. To unhinge a single digit was a herculean task. A select few had been hardy enough to try, but most had simply fallen in with their lot. Most chose the latter and slumbered like the room’s lethargic occupant. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Whilst he slept dingy basements filled with the sickly odour of oriental incense. These places hummed with the clamour of guildsmen sharing out their ill gotten gains, at the expense of the dormant public. Money changed hands for jobs barely done, and from that political capital was built and manipulated. The result was clear to see in a room such as this. A single stone slit barely fit for purpose had been painfully broken into poorly fitted stone. Through the space could be seen the shaky asymmetrical forms of similar towers dotting the skyline. These formed a constant unliving foliage of an uncaring urban jungle, denied the spacious avenues of Bologna or Firenze by the Ligurian peaks. Their soaring forms dominated the landscape. Their foothills just visible through the slit now bathed in the amber light of sunset. Many centuries before the lodger’s birth, their snow-capped ascents had saved the city from endless tribal hordes. Now they served as naught but to hem the squalor into the tightly formed metropole.
The shoddy masonry begat perforations which allowed cold marine winds to hiss into the room. Frozen mountain air laced its flow, yet nothing could disturb his slumber. For him, sleep was a welcome respite from his dishonourable charge. It was true that he had it better than the wretches living on the sunless streets below. Those poor souls had to live their lives among the detritus of stables, the foulness of butcheries and the horror of the knackers yard. Unlike them, his hands had never touched layers of slime and filth. His eyes remained untainted by the shit-stained yellow haze of ancient cobbled streets. His nose sat undamaged by the smell of pollutants. Only his ears had been subject to the incessant cries of poverty. Despite its inferior workmanship, the tower had sheltered him from the worst of the city. However, an attic apartment in the city’s crowded sunless centre did not exactly qualify as a dream home. The sound of his testosterone filled respiration filled the cubby-hole like abode. His warm breath conflicted with the freezing air around him forming misty clouds over his face. It wafted over a single unbalanced table and intermingled with the stench of moulding bread. Its hard body now pocked by steadily expanding microbial green patches. Veins spread ever outwards seeking to infect more healthy tissue with their repugnance. A single block of week-old cheese rested to the bread’s crusted flank. A single black rat hastily scurried across a chipped floor tile. Its oversized molars bled upon crushing the stiff flecks scattered across the tiles. It chomped down forcibly whilst contracting clawlike front appendages. It grasped each morsal as if it was to be its last bite of sustenance.
The bed was tucked away in a corner. Dying sunlight passed first through another slit somewhere in the distance, before then casting itself across the occupant’s sleeping body. The dimensions of his leg were impressive, as was its thickness. It was composed of hard muscle and lumber like skin. Healed over injuries appeared like freshly dug over trenches upon parchment, leaving it seem like hardwood bark. His hairs appeared to be twirling and spinning in ecstasy, like grasses standing erect upon a harvest moon. A battered kneecap protruded from his shadow caked upper leg. It was bony and weathered, a jagged chitinous structure which deviated from spherical norms. Upon his knee rested a gargantuan thigh, reminiscent of freshly hung butchers meat. Its rocklike circumference was devoid of fat deposits and looked to be more similar to finely worked stone. His heaven corpus lay bare to the elements, his poorly stitched sheets long discarded. Tangled pubic hair stood firm in the icy breeze. Its tufts sat ahead of a drooping member which lay across his mid thigh. Black follicle colonies burst from well-defined abdominal muscles before fading into a set of graceful obliques. Large rib bones burst outwards in slow breaths, before contracting with a throaty grunt from a freshly shaved face. With each moan a thundering jugular vain pounded from within its fleshy casing. His whole head seemed to be fused to his body by impenetrably dense muscle tissue. Iron-forged pectorals exploded upward at the slightest movement, before sighing back down. Barely healed lacerations decorated his eight inch forearms, whilst his shoulders hosted bone-deep indentations.
The sleeper’s trade was written across every portion of his upper body. From his well articulated deltoids down to his swelling triceps and cresting biceps. A bespoke chassis custom built for war and war alone. He was the result of decades of training combined with a diet unimaginable to all but the wealthiest. A weapon more than a man, with one purpose and only one purpose. To win. His face confirmed that providence. What had once been a good looking man had been scoured by artificial deformities. His nose bent to the right side, a lobeless ear hung from his left, whilst an ugly scar lay across his lips, testimony to a battle once thought lost. Atop a partially bifurcated skull sat a tuft of hair in the Norman style. An outdated fashion from a martial past fading into ignominy. A hefty right arm hung off a plain wooden bed board. The veins on his biceps extended out to breezeblock like hands, leading to hard unforgiving knuckles. They allowed listless fingers to drop towards the floor. His digits moved excitedly along with his jerking body, the bed clunked as his mass became increasingly motive.
He blinked in the face of a fierce summer sun. Its September rays flooded the battlefield in blinding light. The shining helms of men in full plate stretched across the plain. In the distance stretched the spires of Poitiers, their twisting towers piercing the hot sky. Birds flew across the horizon, their small black forms diving and twirling in total liberation. Their tweets and twitters were inaudible above the constant rumble of metal on metal. Hundreds of men, the bravest and best that England had to spare jostled for space amid the dense formations to his front. He stood bathed in the sun’s warmth. He let it wash over his youthful face. He looked out towards his blurred reflection. It was perfectly rendered in the helm of the man to his front. Glistening blue eyes starred back. Golden sun baked skin, unblemished save from its first juvenile scars surrounded their fathomless depths. He ran a steel gauntleted hand through a short spikey hair. He flashed a malicious smile filled with boiling bloodlust. His conscious mind could just about remember this clash. He relished in replaying its wonder. Nothing could compare to this day. Nothing before nor since. At its cusp the day would bringing him his finest victory. A day that had enabled him to write his name in the annals of the family’s chapel in Gloucester, to be remembered forever. It mattered little if his feelings were simply echoes of that battle, all that mattered was that he got to see it again. He looked down to his shining steel boots. They thudded down against hard cracked dirt. Dust kicked up with each forward movement. He tried to reach down to touch his legs but his found himself deprived of autonomy. The memory had to be played in full. That was all his conscious mind would allow. Of this, he did not despair. Glory awaited.
Out on the far horizon above a blurred mass of black armour plate arose a thunderous sky. Below its pregnant formations unfurled a grand banner. Red Letters sparkled against its gold and black background. Lightning descended and with a calamitous flash struck the shining standard. The ground shook with the sound of metal clad men on the march. A disembodied roar erupted “No quarter!”. All around him euphoric cheers broke out. From the ghostly army rose innumerable plate clad arms holding blood-soaked blades. Ichorous drops fell from their tips and fertilised the ground below with their vital liquids. “We die on the march.” Came a second roaring chorus. The dreamer couldn’t hide the smile that stretched eagerly across his face. He stood tall with his breast pointing to the sky. A supernaturally loud voice crackled through the silence. Its boom seemingly came from naught but the heavens above. “Stand firm dogs! You will not lose to Frenchmen! It is not the will of your king, nor is it mine!” As if from nowhere, a giant strode in betwixt the two masses. Draped in the obsidian armour of House Plantagenet and carrying atop his head a twinkling crown, stood his liege. Charisma flowed from his every movement, each word uttered from his bearded mouth oozing with confidence and the promise of glory. The promise of eternal life among the heroes of the land. For that is what he was. A hero of the kingdom, steward of House Plantagenet and sworn to protect the Kingdom of England and the claims of her divinely ordained monarch. For God and for the king, was no simple phrase. It was a promise. One that the dreamer was eager to keep. He tried to move his arm to praise his lord, tears of joy welled in his eyes. His shock to see his master once more was too much to bear. Such love and benevolent regard he had held for that man, more even than towards his father. “Anything for you” he tried to cry, his mouth rendered useless by his bodily slumber. He turned to the figure next to him.
His would-be comrade seemed strangely familiar. The armour was exquisite, clearly the result of Milanese artisans. Its curvaceous plate bent gracefully whilst its ergonomic joints had been covered in gorgeous sun shaped roundels. Lovingly bent ridges folded over the piece’s shoulders, whilst a silver inscription had been hammered into the steel’s flawless angles. Its magnificence was completed by a graceful bascinet. A chain mailed hand grasped the nasal point and pulled it upwards. “John” he gasped. He felt the wetness on his cheek. A rude intrusion of reality into his visions. He gazed upon his brother. A great sadness consumed him, his heart sank, and he tried to speak. He could not. He tried again with all his might to pronounce a simple syllable. Again he was frustrated. He sought to reach out, but his mind could not bridge the gap. John’s tufted frizzy blonde hair bent up towards the heavens. Its curated shape deformed by the helm. A lightly freckled button nose sitting above soft youthful lips, sat back into a carefree face. A face more suited to rough housing in taverns and chasing maidens. The face of a boy whose war fighting days should never have come. Colourful blue eyes much like his own sat empty in his face. Soulless. This façade was a simple recreation of a consciousness, desperately reaching out into the netherworld. The dreamer’s eyes watered, but he could not wipe them away. The colour drained from his brother’s face. The blue of his irises turned to black. His locks fell away, and his blemish free skin turned to bone. His mind was not kind enough to let him remember him how he was, and in short order only his skull remained.
The boy’s face had only been there for a second. A fleeting moment of remembrance. An image he tried so hard to forget. But his dreams cared not for his feelings. The face vanished almost as quickly as it had come. They were moving forward now. The dream was speeding up. The day was fading. The pace of the battle was nearing its crescendo. Men to his left and right fell as the sky clouded over with the terrifying woosh of crossbow bolts. Each volley sent geometrically perfect metal tips pounding into steel plate. The crunching thud of high velocity metal against plate filled the air. Gravelly screams of anguish went up among the ranks, ephemeral liquid splashed against his face. The sharp metallic taste of blood bled through his dream and on to his tongue. He winced, just as he had on the day. Still they marched forward, uncaring of their losses. The weather changed second by second. Rain and sun battled over the sky, whilst minutes seemed like hours and hours like seconds. Nothing made sense as the two sides at last began to meet. Clanging, clanking, clashing, smashing, bashing and crashing erupted across the soundscape. He found himself hostage to his own visions. His body took direction without his command as if animated by an invisible spirit from up high. Left side, right side, flank, strike from above, slam the hammer down. He repeated the movements again and again. He felt nothing but apathy and the inability to change direction. His heart beat fast as the lack of control shook his senses. In all the change of the last few years he had forgotten what battle was really like. How much he truly enjoyed it. The adrenaline was beginning to kick in, pulsating through his sleeping body. He could feel himself breathing quicker. Shouting out even. Darkness merged with the multicolour kaleidoscope of the dream space. With each emergence into darkness, came an exponentially greater feeling in his arms. “No!” he murmured. He did not wish to wake yet. He begged with his consciousness to let him enjoy a few more moments. The bloodlust reawakening its long dormant hold on him.
He was getting to the apex of the day. He could feel it. The ranks were thinning. The cries of French nobility were becoming faded as their heads crashed against the ground below. He was still standing. Still deflecting blows. Still tearing through muscle and skin. Still moving forward. Each strike against him led him to feel nothing. Here, he was invulnerable. Master of the dormant plane. Or so he thought. He had just watched another glorious dispatch, when from the forward ranks emerged a towering figure. He smiled and chuckled. His body jolted in bed. “Come on then cunt.” He murmured in fevered whispers. He watched his warhammer come down on his opponent’s splendid helm. His rival blocked the blow with an inhumanly large arm and grasped his forearm. The spirit refused to let go, wrestling down the dreamer’s weapon hand. He couldn’t scream but he could move. He tossed and turned in his bed, attempting to move his head from the inevitable blow. A horrible memory began to stir within, but he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t wake. He was on the ground now looking up. His attacker lurked above him, he twirled an enormous two handed blade with a single ghoulish hand. The fear that had caught him that day now ran through him again. His muscles seized up. He tried to wriggle but it was no use. His movements had no effect on the scene playing out before him.
A figure dashed into view. The dreamer’s head split open as an explosion of light blinded him. “No!” he shouted, his voice broke into reality and echoed around the tower. It was his brother. He knew it. He felt it. The boy interspersed himself between the two men. “John!” screamed the dreamer. The boy didn’t react. The scene continued unabated. His attacker knocked John to the floor and walked forward undisturbed. “Stop! I want to wake up! No!” he said. His wriggling turned to violent convulsions. He wrestled against the walls of his dormant mind. But it was fruitless. John parried here and there, dodged, slid underneath and attacked from behind. His energy was endless. At moments it seemed like his mind would mercifully spare him from the inevitable. At others it looked like the outcome would be even worse than he remembered. Finally the moment came. The French giant lashed out a kick, the impact flew into John’s knee. The sheer physical force sent John to the floor. The dreamer exploded to his feet. His body followed the script his mind left for him. He tried to shield John from the final blow. Then as now it was to no avail. The Frenchman’s hammer came down at maximum velocity. The sharpened pick sliced through John’s helm with ease. The spike buried itself into his skull. He saw his brother’s body fall to the ground. His mind flung his body towards the Frenchman’s back. Whilst dormant he felt the white hot rage burst through into his physical reality. With his right hand grasping his hammer and his powerful calves shooting him forward, he buried his own hammer in the Frenchman’s back. The pick impaled his adversary and smashed through his breastplate. The metal column to which the pick was affixed shattered the Frenchman’s spine. The impact reverberated throughout his body. The Frenchman stood in shock. The dreamer unsheathed a dagger from his brother’s belt and wrapped his forearm round the Frenchman’s neck. His enemy coughed and spluttered sending phlegm and blood unto the ground. The French knight’s breathing holes became choked with spit and mucus, as he gargled desperately. The dreamer curled his arm upwards and punched it down through the Frenchman’s neck. His brother’s murderer dropped unceremoniously to the dirt with a heavy thwack.
The dreamer opened his eyes. Darkness surrounded him. It took him a moment to adjust to his surroundings. For a brief moment he wasn’t sure where he was. Was he dead? No. This place fucking reeked. Why did it smell of mould? He began to think he’d never left the battlefield. Being buried alive wasn’t unheard of afterall. He watched feeble orange rays and their equally pathetic shadows dance on the wall. His eyes darted to the slit carved in the wall. He shivered. “Definitely alive then.” He muttered grumpily. He squinted. “Is that my voice?” he groaned, repulsed by its crackle. Maybe he was ill? Then he looked around his bed. A collection of wine stained glasses littered his bedside. That was probably the cause, he reasoned. It wasn’t his fault really. The wine here was so cheap and plentiful. Much better than the slop they served in English inns. There was of course the justification that since he’d fallen so far, there was no harm in collapsing even further in status. At least this was classy drinking, might even have been drunk by the Pope! Imagine that, he thought. He swung his legs over the bed and made contact with the cold cobbled floor below. It sent a frigid shudder down his spine. He grimaced. Genova, what a city – hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. At least in England the weather was always shite. He chuckled at the thought. His dour judgement of the city would change the moment the spring came, that he already knew. It was the same every year, but he wouldn’t let that get in the way of some English pessimism.
He stared at the floor and watched a rat scurry into the walls. Of all the cities to end up in, why did it have to be this one? It was a question he regularly asked himself. What would it be tonight he wondered. Debt collecting? Protecting a VIP? Door security at a brothel? Maybe chucking out some tenants who won’t pay. Who knew? Whatever his work now was, it was interesting at least. He had his money on a kidnapping, he hadn’t been asked for one of those in ages. If it was a kidnapping, it was usually not too difficult. Just turn up at the target’s door, barge in and take them. Nice and easy. Everyone knew who he worked for afterall, nobody wanted to ask questions as long as House Verratti stood at his back. He watched the rat poke its furry head from a crevice in the stonework. It probably had a family to get back to. He bent over and rubbed its head with a soft gentle touch. In all likelihood, the rat was probably doing better than he was in life. Then again he didn’t need to eat mouldy leftovers. Not out of necessity anyway. He rubbed his face and gave himself a moderately strong slap. “Ah.” He said, embracing the slight ringing in his ears. “So it was all a dream then.” He said disappointedly. “I would have liked to see John again.” He said whilst yawning. He relaxed and stood up. He cupped his ample testicles and smiled. “You always have to check your bollocks”. He said to the rat. It was an old soldier’s joke, something to freak out the squires. The rat didn’t react. “You don’t give a toss do you?” he asked the rodent. “Not even a squeak” he said sadly.
It was just about dark. The sky had turned from red to a dark blue whilst candlelight had begun to illuminate, the rows of windowed towers surrounding his apartment. He sighed. Of all the things he missed from England, it was his squire – Robert that he missed the most. The art of squirehood was often overlooked by his contemporaries. The provision of maidens, the armouring before battle, the carrying of belongings and of course the provision of a training partner, it all made life so much easier. Someone to banter with, someone to be in awe of oneself. Someone to ride with and to hunt with. His sojourn to Genova and his extended stay had become some of the loneliest days of his life. He got dressed in his under layers and fastened a leather vest to his torso. His days of being adorned in exquisite plate were long over. That glory had now passed him by. To be a street thug, you had to look like a street thug. You had to know their ways, their styles of fighting and above all to be handy with both your fists and daggers. The weapons of the common folk, of assassins and of thieves. He finished attaching his armour to his body and cast an eye to a battered elm case. It sat in the shadows under his shallow bed.
He peered through the murk. He could just about make out the elegant sigils of his noble house. Its lettering had been lovingly carved into its luxurious wooden frame, a reminder of a more elegant life. What had originally been a beloved gift had become a sour sign of his drastic fall from grace. Where once he had served the Plantagenet court, he now bent his knee to the mercantile gangsters of a modern day Sodom. The men he served were an insult to his chivalric oaths. Their world was ruled by ruthlessness and money. The honour of a sworn knight meant nothing but weakness to them. Had he stepped into it by his own volition, he may not have been so bitter. However, that was not so and as such he felt every right to feel cheated. The harbourside scum who called themselves his bosses, were in reality not fit to lick his boots. His new work was an offense to the warrior’s profession, but he had little choice. Not if he ever wanted to get out of here. “Ah” he sighed. He shifted his view. He had no wish to start the day at such a low ebb. “Come on there’s work to do.” He said to the rat. Under the carved slit sat a second less finely worked box. Within lay the tools of his trade. They waited in expectant anticipation of what the night would bring. He rose from the bed. His quadriceps visibly contracted with each movement forward. He brushed crumbs off his boiled leather cuirass and stretched out poorly healed fingers across a broken lock. The container’s lid squealed open. The implements stared back at him. The finest torture kit one could piece together, lovingly granted to him on his arrival to the cursed city. In the middle, amidst the torsion applicators and razor sharp tongs sat a pair of blocky brass knuckles. He placed them in a leather satchel which he then wrapped round his front.
Now dressed, he sought to sate his growling belly. He picked up the stale bread and diligently picked out its vibrant mould colonies. It tasted like shit. Perhaps the wine would be better. His lips puckered up as its sour flavour hit his tastebuds. Crisp was a generous description of what would better be termed piss. He licked his lips and beheld the glass in his hand. He pulled a bemused expression. “Italian finery my arse.” He said venomously. The Venetian glass goblet clinked against the gnawed mahogany table surface. The door clunked open, and his boots clipped and clopped across the dusty hallway floor. He squeezed into the small space around him. The distance between his door and his neighbour’s barely ran longer than his arm. He prayed for the old babbler to stay indoors. Not only was he a bore, but he stank of urine. Knowing this world, it probably was urine. He couldn’t imagine a grizzled sailor such as he, would have owned a frivolity like a chamber pot. Before he could think, a voice crept out of a barely opened door. “Going somewhere English? I’d stay in if I were you.” The neighbour croaked through a tangled white beard. “Those lads been harassing you again Giacomo?” English replied sincerely. “Not since you broke the ginger one’s arm.” Giacomo replied. He smiled through an uneven row of rotting teeth. “His mother’s a whore now. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll give her one from you.” English’s words were cold and devoid of feeling. Giacomo laughed nervously and the door whimpered shut. He’d fuck her good tonight, really make her feel it. Just deserts for siring a mannerless toerag he thought. English jogged down the stairs. A sweet reminiscence of his own days as a squire. Up and down. Day and night. The battlements, the castle towers, the rolling hills, anywhere there was elevation. Nothing for training the heart like that, English thought wistfully.
English stepped out into the dark side street that lurked outside his forsaken tower. He took in the acrid smells of fish mixed with human waste. Before he’d come here, he hadn’t thought anywhere could smell as bad as London. Nor could a place be as crowded as her slums. Nor could the people be as ugly and inbred as her watermen. He had quickly learned his error, for the streets of Genova reminded him less of London, but of Paris’s plague pits. “Shit city.” He said. He stood for a moment to reacquaint himself with the squalor. Isolated in his sky high abode, he was often shielded from its worst effects. Here on the ground there was no such protection. English attempted to gain his composure and looked out to the throng of beggars, sailors, whores and crooks that traversed his street. Their inhuman voices offended him greatly. High pitched whining. Droning and moaning all day and all night. But above all it was the incessant the lyrical singing of inebriated sailors that drove him mad. Of course the ways of the peasants were not unknown to him. He’d known many of their number in France, but these city dwellers were a whole other order of vile. But that’s just how it was going to be. He steeled himself and walked into the ambling crowd, out towards the brothels and casinos so beloved of his new masters.
