Authors: J. Kent Holloway
Jerusalem,
AD 1184
Thick streams of sweat clung to Horatio’s tunic as he clambered
up the stone walkway toward the Jaffa Gate. The arid heat burned pitilessly through
his tired lungs which heaved for breath with each exhausted stride. It was
nearly midnight and the cool relief of the nighttime desert had failed to drift
toward the City of David.
Horatio could not remember a time he was more miserable, or
how many times he and his dimwitted cousin, Samuel, had already walked along the
same path this evening.
Too many times
, he thought, and nothing to show for their labors or
discomfort. If he kept it up, his chain mail would surely rust from
perspiration—or he’d die of dehydration. Either way, his skills and talents
were being completely wasted. Countless battles won on behalf of Lord Gregory
and this was the gratitude the pompous braggart showed him. He was a knight,
after all. A knight of low birth, but a
knight
nevertheless. It was simply unthinkable…reduced to sentry duty—securing the
gate until the caravan escorting a group of soon-to-be slaves for Gregory’s
excavations arrived.
Which was ridiculous when one considered
it.
The Jaffa Gate was unique among all the gates of Jerusalem for being
built at a right angle—a natural defense against attackers and brigands coming
up from the Jaffa Road. The architecture was the reason the baron had chosen
this gate to receive his newest commodities.
Gregory had insisted the caravan arrive during the night
with little to no pomp and ceremony. To keep the slave transaction as
clandestine as possible, he’d opted to utilize only one of his knights as
opposed to a full company as he would have if the mission was truly as
important as he’d told Horatio.
No, the knight was beginning to believe the baron was
having his fun with him.
Teaching him a lesson from ever
speaking out against the baron’s methods ever again.
And what better way
to teach an errant knight a bit of humility than by placing them on menial
guard duty?
But the sentry work wasn’t what bothered him the most. It
was the object he was forced to protect.
Slavers.
The
very thing he’d questioned Gregory about. No, this assignment was all about a
lesson in blind obedience.
Of course, he had been told the assignment was one of
utmost importance. He’d been led to believe he’d been chosen for his valor…the
last defense against a ghost, a myth, a…
“What was that?” asked Horatio.
“What was what?” His squire, Samuel, asked.
“Shut up and listen!”
“Listen to what?”
The knight didn’t answer. Clamping one gloved hand over
Samuel’s mouth, Horatio cocked his head to the left, straining to identify the
strange noise that jolted him from his sour reflections…but he could hear very
little in the shell-like confines of the helmet.
He didn’t have time for this. The slave caravan would be
advancing the hill any moment. Now was not the time to allow anything to slip
through the perimeter.
Placing a finger to his lips, the young knight removed the
headgear, struggling to keep the mesh neck protector from
clinking
the stillness from the night.
“What, pray tell, are we listening for?” Samuel’s hoarse
whisper grated against the silence.
“If I knew that, then I wouldn’t have to be listening, now
would I?”
“I
dunno
‘bout that.”
“Do be quiet,” commanded Horatio, increasingly irritated
with his wife for insisting he make Samuel his squire as he took up the
Holy Cross
, as the crusaders called the
great quest to the
Outremer
, ‘the
Land Beyond the Sea.’ “Just stand still and listen. I heard a strange noise, so
just keep quiet for a few more seconds.” He paused and glared at his cousin.
“Please,” he added.
Samuel merely nodded before becoming distracted by some
unseen object within his own nose. His finger dug furiously to dislodge the
nuisance. The sight disgusted Horatio, but at least it kept his squire
occupied…and more importantly, kept the idiot quiet.
Tensing, Horatio peered into the darkness beyond, carefully
listening for any signs of an intruder. The silence devoured all sounds, as if
the very city of Jerusalem had been swallowed by the sweltering night. A few
palm fronds swayed in a hot breeze coming up from the valley while the gentle song
of locusts pulsed rhythmically all around them. But the noise the knight had
originally heard was no more.
Horatio strained to place the sound—a gentle rustle of
canvas in the wind, a flurry of light footsteps from wall’s walkway above. He
just couldn’t put his finger on what it had been. Nor could he exorcize the
uncomfortable sensation that the sound had elicited upon him. It was an
irrational feeling, he was sure. Fear without merit. There simply was nothing
out there. All was still.
“Oh!” cried Samuel, shattering the silence. “You’re
listening for the Hob!”
Horatio’s throat squeezed up toward his skull as he jerked
involuntarily at the sudden outburst from his cousin. He felt one of his knees
give slightly as he mustered enough strength to refrain from jumping out of his
own boots.
“Quiet, you fool!” Horatio hissed, smacking the simpleton
on the backside of the head. “You’ll give someone a heart attack! And no, I’m
not listening for the
Hob
, as you put
it. There’s no such thing as goblins or ghosts or anything of the sort.”
Horatio wished he was as confident of that fact as he
sounded. With all the talk about the hobgoblin that was terrorizing the
Christians now occupying the Holy City, even he was beginning to believe it
might be true. This, of course, was unthinkable. Horatio was educated. He had
no time, nor inclination, to entertain the tales of old wives. He just wished
he could convince his own nerves of that.
“But I thought that’s why we were out here tonight.”
“No, we’re out here tonight as lookouts against any
possible brigands or heathen that would try to take what belongs to Baron
Gregory,” said Horatio, willing himself to overcome the nagging fear that was
creeping up his spine.
But who could really blame him? All this talk about a
spectral creature made of smoke and mist, shadow and nightmare, stalking the Holy
Soldiers of God in the dead of night would have most anyone rattled. The Saracens
were calling the creature
a
djinn
, some dark spirit
sent by Allah to protect them from the Christian occupation. Horatio had called
it hogwash when he first heard about the attacks. Now, he wasn’t so sure. At
least thirteen knights and foot soldiers had disappeared without a trace since
the
Djinn’s
attacks had begun six months ago. What if
he was wrong? What if the Hob was real? What if Gregory’s excavations of the
tunnels below Jerusalem had somehow awakened some ancient spirit that even now
sought vengeance upon them?
Yes, even the great knight known as Horatio was having his
doubts. But he wasn’t about to let anyone know it.
“But Lord Gregory said…”
“I don’t care what Gregory said. There’s no such thing as
hobgoblins, I’m telling you. Especially not here.”
“That’s not what gram said, Horatio. She told me stories.
Those hobs are bad business, I tell you.”
Horatio sighed. There simply was no reasoning with the
buffoon, so he continued walking.
“She said that the hobs would visit the unwary sinner in
his sleep and carry them back to their holes and do all sorts of unspeakable
things,” continued Samuel, straining to keep up with Horatio’s long strides.
“No one ever returned from a hob
hole
, it’s said. And
Horatio, the very same thing is happening here.”
“If no one ever returned then how on earth do we know such
things exist?”
“Well, they say there are some…those with
learnin
’ in sorcery and such who can speak with them,”
Samuel was persistent. “That’s how we know such things.”
Horatio could do nothing but continue walking into the
darkness, shaking his head. There really was no convincing the youngster and
Horatio wasn’t even sure he should try. All the signs pointed to Samuel’s
conclusion. It all seemed so supernatural.
The attacks.
The disappearances.
And in each encounter, it was said
that the very shadows around the
Djinn’s
victims came
alive and swallowed them whole. A shiver rattled involuntarily down Horatio’s
sweat drenched body.
The torchlight from
the city streets no longer reached them out on the outer edge of the walls of
Jerusalem. Horatio’s sharp eyes searched the path ahead, looking for any movement
in the murk before them. For one brief second, he could have sworn that an
amorphous shadow actually slithered against the stone wall, but it was gone as
quickly as it appeared.
This is crazy
, thought Horatio.
The
boy’s rattling my nerves. It’s just superstitious nonsense, after all
.
“Lord Gregory says this
djinn
is nothing more than a good
ol
’
English hobgoblin,” droned Samuel. “And there’s plenty of ways to deal with the
likes of him, he says. But I’m not so sure. I think that maybe…
urk
!”
The prattling rant of his squire ceased with a yelp,
spinning Horatio around, sword drawn in one swift motion. Samuel was nowhere to
be seen. In the place where he had stood was nothing but a plume of smoke,
reeking of brimstone. Horatio spun around again, scanning every nook and shadow
that lined Jerusalem’s wall.
The Hob had struck. It had taken poor Samuel in a flash of
hellfire and Horatio had been unable to do anything against it. Panic welled up
in the knight’s chest. He knew the creature still lurked somewhere nearby and
unseen.
“Come out!” Horatio cried, angered that his voice trembled
with each syllable.
The knight spun left,
then
right,
his sword extended out from his body, ready to strike at anything that moved
against him. The reek of brimstone burned his nostrils and he struggled not to
retch. The stench was ghastly.
Nothing can
smell as bad as this
, Horatio thought, as he tried to compose himself.
“I say come out, coward!”
A soft breeze blew across his face, the beads of sweat
rolled over his brow like the icy fingertips of death. Horatio placed his
helmet on top of his head once more and stepped toward the spot where Samuel
had only seconds ago stood.
The wary knight looked down to examine the ground. A weird
black powder scorched the earth near his squire’s footprints.
“Odd,” Horatio said aloud.
Crouching down, the knight dipped his finger into the
powder. Bringing the residue to his face, his nose wrinkled in disgust. There
was no doubt about it.
Brimstone
.
The nausea washed over the knight’s senses again. He felt dizzy.
“Foul odor,” he muttered.
“The vestiges
of hell itself.”
“Not exactly,” said a cold muffled voice from somewhere
behind Horatio.
The knight spun around. A sharp hiss shot out from the
darkness and Horatio felt the frigid bite of unseen tendrils snaking around his
ankle. A jerk from above, and the knight’s foot flew up into the sky pulling
the rest of his body with it. His sword slipped from his grasp, clanging as it
struck the hard, dry earth and Horatio found himself hanging upside down, five
feet off the ground.
A gleefully malicious cackle resonated from somewhere in
the darkness.
The
Hob
.
Twisting his head around to look for the source of his
sudden misfortune, Horatio let out a single whimper. Sheer, unadulterated
terror wrapped around his body like spiny tentacles, threatening to squeeze the
life from his lungs.
Standing mere inches from the upended knight stood a
creature as dark as the night itself. Its black turban—what the Saracens call a
tagelmust
—flapped in the warm breeze, blending itself
perfectly into the darkness. Horatio reckoned it stood a full ten feet tall if
it stood an inch, and hid its horrible features behind a shroud of black cloth.
Long leather boots reached above its knees and the broad curved scimitar
clutched in the creature’s clawed hand glistened in the light of the moon. Its
other hand held a strange cord that stretched up and around a wooden awning
that stretched out from the city’s wall and descended again around Horatio’s
ankle.
The Hob leaned forward. Horatio struggled against the
bindings around his ankle, trying desperately to free himself…to flee…but it
was no use. The dark spirit had cast its accursed spell against him and the
knight hung helplessly in midair…frozen with dread.
The Hob glided over; its outstretched claw caressing the
frightened knight’s face, pulling his head up to look Horatio square in the
eyes.
Those eyes.
Horatio could not recall ever seeing such horribly dark
eyes.
Eyes of vengeance.
Eyes of
malice.
Eyes that glowed with green ethereal fire as
though reflecting the very flames of Hell itself.