Free Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) by Roberto Calas

fallen to the stone floor of the nave, striking the chandelier on his way down. Shadows lurch dizzyingly across the church as the candles swing.
    The plaguer tries to rise but his leg is broken and his cheek shattered. He struggles to one knee, then is flattened by another plaguer falling on him from the gallery. Tristan picks up his sword and draws it from the scabbard. “Finish your chat,” he says. “I’ll entertain our guests.”
    I turn back to the wounded man. “So you’re Alexander the Cruel?”
    He stares at me wordlessly. The crest on his tabard is the gold engrailed cross of William, earl of Suffolk. A steel arrow brooch on his shoulder marks him as a ventenar, a man who leads twenty archers. Alexander the Cruel is nothing but an up-jumped longbowman.
    It is not just the man’s leg that is broken. One of his arms hangs limp. Perhaps he fell from the gallery too. His fingernails are cracked and broken from the limestone floor.
    “Just a name,” he says. “Just…just to…scare people.”
    “You scared those Frenchmen on the road,” I say. “They must have been terrified when you strapped them to those carriage wheels.”
    “Invaders,” he says.
    “People,” I say. Two figures lurch from the shadows of the north chapel. I jam my cannon into the shoulder sack, then strap my sword belt around my waist.
    “Kill them,” Alexander says. “Please, dear God, kill them.”
    I look into my shoulder sack to make sure the thighbone of Saint Luke is still there. It is. But something else is missing. I search the pews, fighting down panic, then drop to my knees. The pouch containing Elizabeth’s glove lies beneath a pew. I open the small leather bag and breathe in her scent before running my belt through the loop at the back of the pouch.
    Tristan returns from his grim task and tugs his helmet onto his head. “Thanks for finding this,” he says.
    “They’ll eat me while I live,” Alexander hisses. The first plaguer stumbles on a fallen candelabra. The metal clanks loudly and scrapes along the floor, chains jangling and echoing in the nave.
    I look back at Alexander. I think of nine women raped and split slowly in half. “Do you see that carved shelf beneath the seat that you are leaning on?”
    His eyes glance away from the approaching plaguers to the platform, then back to me. “They’re almost here! For the love of God! I have money. I have horses. Whatever you want.”
    “It’s called a misericord,” I say. “It’s a French word. Do you know what it means?”
    “Mary and Joseph, they’re going to kill me!”
    Tristan shakes his head. “No, I think that would be, Marie et Joseph, ils vont me tuer .”
    I give Tristan a look that makes him back away, then address Alexander again. “Do you know what it means?”
    The plaguers have found a way around the candelabra.
    Alexander tries to drag himself away from them, but with one arm he can only creep. The pain makes him cry out. “Why are you talking about French words? I don’t know what it means! I don’t have any idea!”
    “No.” I say. “I imagine you don’t.” I don my great helm and motion Tristan and Belisencia toward the door.
    “You’re killing me!” Alexander shouts. “You are killing me!”
    There are no words to his next scream. Only unholy terror. Alexander screams from the soul.

Chapter 11
    Belisencia turns on me as we step outside. “You left that man to be torn apart!” She glances into the church one last time and crosses herself. “He’s still alive! Oh, Mother Mary, he’s still alive!”
    “ Mea maxima culpa ,” I say.
    There is an old stable behind the church, a three-sided structure of weathered oak with short partitions separating it into ten stalls. Eight horses are tethered in the stalls, but a pair of plaguers ravage one of them. The horse lies on its side and nickers softly. One leg kicks out occasionally as if in a spasm. The acrid smell of blood mingles with that of horseshit. A plaguer has thrust