Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) by Roberto Calas Read Free Book Online Page A

drive the sword with both hands at his forehead. The blade skips off bone and gouges his temple, so I plunge my sword down again and finally break through the skull. His legs kick once, then he is still.
    I glance at Tristan. He is blood spattered and panting, but unharmed.
    “Now that was a storm of shit,” he says.
    Peter glares at him. I shake my head and gesture with my chin toward the watching children. Tristan covers his mouth. “My apologies,” he calls to them. “It was a storm of ships. Like a tempest at sea. That’s what I intended.”
    Someone chuckles behind me. “That’s what I meant .”
    Tristan and I spin around so quickly that a spot of blood is fired from my tunic and splatters the door. I look at the man before me. “Zhuri?”
    “My friends!” Zhuri shouts. “I was certain that was you on the Roman road!”
    “God’s mighty penis!” Tristan embraces him with one arm, holding his bloodstained sword at a distance. Peter hisses at the words, but I do not think Tristan hears it. “How did you find us?”
    The man in the white robe and veil finally speaks. “We followed the sounds of blasphemy.”
    The abbey seems to spin around me. I stumble backward and look carefully at the man who has spoken. “That’s . . . that’s not possible.”
    Tristan’s sword falls jangling to the stone floor. He touches his mouth with one hand. “How . . . what . . .”
    The man removes his veil. The skin of his face is broken in places by shining red wounds, and laced with black streaks. The side of his jaw is one long, healing sore, but he grins anyway.
    Tristan looks as unsteady as I do. He places both hands on his head. “Morgan?”
    Sir Morgan laughs. “It seems the Lord is done testing me.”
    Life has come from death. The world has gained humanity.
    Morgan is cured.
    “Hallelujah!” Zhuri shouts.
     

EPISODE 2
     
     
     

Episode 2 Maps
     

     

 
     
     
     

     

Chapter 8

    “How?” I throw my arms around Morgan and embrace my old friend. “How are you healed?”
    Morgan groans and pulls away from my embrace. “Still healing,” he says, wincing.
    Zhuri grins a wolfish smile and opens his mouth to speak, but Peter herds us out of the galley. The Moor tries to speak to me once more as we walk but Peter speaks first.
    “You must be hungry,” he says. “Come with me to the refectory. We don’t have much, but we can take the edge off your hunger.” His voice is taut. He glances back toward the gaping faces of the huddled families in the galley, then shoves us onward as servants come to clean the blood from the foyer. I believe Father Peter is more concerned with Tristan’s cursing than with our hunger.
    The briny scent of stew greets us as we enter the sparse refectory. The other monks are already at the table, eating a leek pottage and black bread while scripture is read to them. I am not certain how early it is, but I imagine they have just finished matins, the first service of the day, which is practiced two hours after midnight.
    The monk reading scripture falls silent as we take seats at the long, bare table. I smile at Morgan. I cannot stop smiling.
    Morgan has been returned to us.
    He was afflicted because of me. Because I chose to involve him in this quest. A plagued animal bit him and he spiraled into the darkness. We were forced to leave him in a black cellar, at a convent in Hedingham, and Zhuri was his only light. The Moor stayed behind to watch over him while Tristan and I continued to St. Edmund’s Bury.
    We left Morgan in a cellar, like a wild dog, and the thought of him in that dark place weighed upon me like a dragging anvil. Like God’s finger pinning my tabard to the soil.
    But he is healed.
    Perhaps I am being forgiven for the countless sins I have committed on my journey. I do not feel forgiven, but a ray of God’s light has broken through the clouds.
    Tristan claps Morgan on the back and the old knight winces.
    “Heaven’s gate, Tristan!” Morgan