I’m Terribly Sorry: Part Three

            A cold choir of moans echoed across the hills. Figures staggered through the dim streams of moonlight, which cut through the darkness of the forest. Their eyes white jewels encased in rotten settings of dead flesh, staring past their wanting outstretched hands.  

            “Hump, Hump, what is the awful racquet? Are the feral cats fighting over the trash heap again? Hump!?” Dark Francis called out, but it was met with no response from his faithful man Hump. “Hump! Where are you?”

            There was still no answer except for the faint sound of nails being raked across wood. Francis looked out into his dim quarters illuminated only by the dying embers of his fire.

            Dark Francis decided to investigate and slipped from his fur covered bed and donned a robe over his cream-colored nightshirt. He lit a small candle and grabbed a small sack coughing dust, which he deposited in his robe pocket. He listened carefully at the noise and began to follow it back to its origin through the dark halls of his keep.

            “Hump is that you? Hump where are you?” Dark Francis called into the darkness as he walked, but there was still no reply.

            The noise led him to the commoner’s entrance where he heard only the erratic scratching.

            “Damn cats,” Dark Francis muttered to himself. “I’ll show them who they just woke up.”

            Dark Francis flung the door open to find a stocky little calico cat sitting patiently among a forest of legs. Dark Francis’s gaze followed them up slowly to see the pale, cold faces of a group of villagers. The cat dashed instantly between Dark Francis’s legs.

            “What are all of you doing outside my keep?” Dark Francis demanded.

            The horde reached out their hands simultaneously to grasp at Dark Francis.

            “I said be gone!” Dark Francis shouted as he unloaded the pouch of coughing powder into the faces of the horde.

            The mass stopped for a brief second as if confused by the mist in the air and then lunged again. Dark Francis fell to the floor kicking out violently crawling back across the floor and then he was up again in full run in escape of the horde that rushed inside the hall like a crashing wave. Evil grasping hands and gnashing green teeth were only feet behind him and closing each precious inch with each passing moment.

            “Hump! Hump! Come save me! The villagers are revolting! They’re trying to kill me!”

            The shuffling mass followed Dark Francis into one of the old meeting halls filled with benches and tables, the place where his father used to have his war councils. He tripped over a protruding bench sending him into a row of stools. He tried to extricate himself from the jumbled mess, but they were already on top of him. An old woman opened her mouth as if to yell something at him. This is it, Dark Francis thought, and then the top half of her head disappeared as if it had been ushered out of existence with a waved hand. Then the next to closest fell the same way.

            Hump had charged in on the villagers axe in hand. His first swing took off the top off an old woman’s head. The next took two men through the neck at the same time, their heads made a dull thud as they hit the stone floor. The last three he dispatched in quick succession, each across the chest and arms, his axe cut a clean path through flesh and bone with no more effort than if he were skimming the blade through water.

            “Are you alright Sir?” Hump said. Hump took up position in front of the door and dispatched the villagers as they staggered in like he was some immovable killing machine. It was if the villagers were walking into the jaws of a meat grinder.

            “Where the hell were you?”

            “In the privy Sir,” Hump said crushing a villager’s skull like a rotten walnut with the broadside of his axe.

            “I told you they would come for me sooner or later, the filthy ignorant things.”

            “Right as usual Sir,” Hump said as he took off the head of teen boy who stepped through the door.

            “What barbarians! They even sent their children after me,” Dark Francis commented.

            “Truly depraved individuals,” Hump said splitting a villager like a piece of kindling.

            After what seemed like an eternity, the shambling horde was put down. All that was left were the dismembered parts that littered the hall.

            “Well if it’s a fight they want than it’s a fight they’ll get. These stupid villagers can’t get rid of me so easily. Hump prepare my war horse. We’re going to teach these filthy villagers a lesson,” Dark Francis said, as the morning sun broke the horizon.

To be continued…