It was no peaceful night.
The moon was bright, the roads were clear, and dry wood sated the appetites of more than one campfire. However, the forest’s silence, hanging over the blanket of lesser lights that rule the night, was a false silence. No animal broke the forest leaves or cracked the dead sticks while they foraged; the wolves did not howl to coordinate their packs’ hunts, the trees did not shake with the flight of the owls, and the dogs at the camp only rattled their chains when they scratched at the dirt and tried to tuck their tails further up between their legs.
For the hardy folk, the cunning peasants whose lives on the roads of this black forest were measured by the bodies buried in ancient, tangled roots, the silence provided an obscene sense of comfort. The forest is dangerous at night, and the good queen, Goodwitch, plays the whore with her beloved General. It is what it is.
No comfort, however, was available for the Puritan wanderer, Cardin Winchester, this night. Not when peace had fled for cheerier horizons, a God-fearing man could not rest his weary head on a feather pillow, and he could smell witchcraft among the peasants he shared that sleepless night.
His eyes glared a fanatical, steely blue from beneath the lowering brows at the ‘Witch,’ a hardy farm girl whose animalistic, pagan curse showed itself in the pair of rabbit ears poking through her long, russet hair out from the top of her head. Shameless in her dress, which clung wantonly to her body on the cusp of ripeness, and in her behavior, in the exchange of bawdy jabs and brief but lasciviously cherished moments of physical contact with the men still awake at their respective campfires. As the Witch meandered past, she would drop bundles of herbs into the flames, and that caused the pungent smell that kept Cardin from his rest, even though he had built his campfire far from the others.
Presently, the Witch came to Cardin’s fire.
“Something to help you sleep, sir?”
The Witch was about to place one of her bundles into Cardin’s fire, but Cardin grabbed the Witch’s wrist.
“None of that,” Cardin said before releasing the Witch, “honest labor, not pagan herbs, sweetens a man’s sleep.”
The Witch did not flinch at Cardin’s rebuke; neither did she seem to fear the dour Puritan. The Witch was a woman, after all, and no woman could fear a man whose appearance struck like lightning. The experiences of past bloody battles and the zealous self-discipline needed to make full use of such experiences made Cardin seem dignified instead of cruel. His hands were large yet were not ungainly, and he could pull both the trigger of a flintlock pistol and the corsets from a maiden’s breasts with the delicacy of a master sculptor.
One of those pistols lay in Cardin’s warm, broad lap. It was a practical thing. The dull, iron barrel was long for range and accuracy, while its varnished, gleaming, wood-and-iron body was squat and thick for power. The weapon’s beauty drew in the Witch. Much like the Puritan, its function was expertly fulfilled, without frippery or superfluity in its construction. The austere, ascetic allure of both wielder and weapon fascinated the Witch. The process of stripping away all that was unnecessary was inspiring to the waif’s imagination as a result.
The Witch smoothed out her skirts across her broad, doe-like thighs before she sank into the packed, dry earth within Cardin’s reach. Encouraged by the Puritan’s tolerance of her intrusion, the Witch carefully leaned her chest forward and said.
“These herbs are a medicinal recipe my grandmother taught me just as her mother did. The plants are roots picked from the forest itself. There is no more paganism in my soothing balms as there are fish in the sky.”
Cardin did not turn to look at the Witch. However, it was not because he disliked those who would dabble in such heresies, even though he had burned his share of witches when the witch hunts were at their peak. Neither was it because of some failing or lapse in his understanding of social graces, though one would be hard-pressed to attribute grace to any of the Puritan faith.
Instead, Cardin’s blue eyes had assumed the glazed stare of a man whose eyes were covered by the translucent film of memory. The campfire light reflected no longer off the spirit that resided behind a man’s God-given windows to their soul, gone as that spirit was on a long journey across time and space.
“I have seen fish fly like sparrows when I served a time as a Privateer,” Cardin said mechanically, “and just as fish may find themselves in a place nature had not intended them to be, the devil and his minions may, from time to time, wander from their haunts to add to mans’ troubles.”
Cardin fed the flame with kindling, and the Puritan’s voice hardened alongside the fire, flaring hot with renewed vigor. A less innocent memory had seemingly taken its place of honor in Cardin’s mind, and the words he spoke were now woven thick with the emotions that accompanied that memory.
“After all, is it not said that the devil may take on the guise of servants of light? Verily, I have preserved my life with poultices and brews made from herbs far fouler than you could imagine. Yet these life-giving roots could also be turned to evil labors, and if one recognizes evil, one should take shrewd pains to avoid it and thus remain innocent as lambs.”
The Witch stared at the Puritan and considered the zealous, intolerant speech rich with tempered wisdom, so unlike the sermons of the other Witch-Hunters, Priests, and Inquisitors she had crossed paths with.
“Nevertheless, is it not wise to use the devil’s weapons against him?”
“The Devil may allow his minions success from time to time, but when it counts? No house can stand when it is divided. But lo! What is that commotion I hear?”
Springing to his feet like a Panther who senses prey, Cardin girt upon his broad, blacksome form the wide leather belt and bandolier upon which hung the dark, deadly pistols which were the tools of his bloody trade. At his hip hung neither a long Mistralian Rapier nor a broad sword of Atlesian Steel. Instead, there was a pair of slender and heavy iron rods with a pair of crosses that formed handguards just above their hilts.
Cardin’s stride was the lope of a hungry wolf, and in the breadth of time it took a bird to flap its wings, Cardin was at the front of the crowd that formed a ring around the disturbance with the Witch panting laboriously at his flank.
At the center of the ring was a pair of stout matrons tending to a weeping Maid. The Maid babbled gibberish to Cardin’s ears, but her torn dress and raw wounds were enough for Cardin to step forward and order the Maid to be made comfortable after her ordeal.
Oh, thank you, kindly Puritan!” the Maid abruptly said and stumbled gratefully toward Cardin. Her long, pale arms and her twilight tresses that framed her face just so were an inviting promise of a tempting reward. But as the Maid walked into a stray moonbeam, Cardin’s instincts, an atavistic, primordial sense of danger, brought the Puritan’s hand, which was filled with the butt of a pistol, to the Maid’s face.
The crack of the pistol shot was an ugly sound that turned the Maid’s pretty face into a hideous, red ruin. The Maid did not fall, however, and it seemed instead that the remaining malevolent, golden eye that hung by a loose sinew from the remains of her shattered skull turned full upon the swift Puritan and the smoking pistol that he held in his iron grip.
The Maid then silently pointed her finger at Cardin and unleashed the hell upon the earth.
“Thou heretical harlot of hell!” Cardin roared to heaven as his free hand drew forth a second pistol, “Let this last meal of lead speed you on the road to perdition!”
The second shot dropped the Maid’s body, but gibbering, misshapened monstrosities quickly filled the gap and rushed at Cardin with their eyes stitched shut and silent screams that came from gaping mouths covered with taut, pale skin.
Cardin's last two pistols drew great gouts of blood from the creatures closest to him, and while more monsters swarmed over the bodies of their pack, Cardin’s puritanical fervor was brought to a righteous boil.
“Bleed, do ye?! Then come forth, fall upon the good Lord’s steel, and be damned to ye!”
Cardin now rushes forward. With no time to refill his pistols, the brawling Puritan pulls his steel rods free from his wide belt. His first swing shattered the wrist of a beast when it tore at his shoulder. A long, springing stride carried Cardin’s second swing forward and caved in the skull of a second creature.
“Arm yourselves, you fools!” Cardin bellowed back toward the campfires, “Die like men or be slaughtered like lambs!”
Heartened by Cardin’s fury, the peasants took up their weapons and fought for their lives. Even the Witch, her herbs and witchcraft forgotten, picked up a brand from a fire and drove monsters back with desperate courage.
So it was that the night passed, and the dawn of the morning revealed the carnage left upon that forest road.
As the peasants broke camp and prepared to continue on their journey, the Witch walked up to Cardin as he placed freshly filled pistols into his holsters.
“Will you not stay with us, Puritan?”
Cardin’s response was to pull the Witch close and kiss her full on the lips. He then said,
“Guard well your virtue and keep your faith in the good Lord and his only begotten Son. Nothing else would you need to protect yourself against the forces of evil.”
Cardin then turned away to walk a known road with an unknown goal, and his lonely, darksome figure was soon etched into the horizon by the light of the morning sun.
