Chapter
23
The
Atrocity at Bram
The zombie looks like a man, walks like a man, eats
and otherwise functions fully, yet is devoid of the spark. It represents the
nagging doubt that lays deep in the heart of even the most zealous believer: behind all of your pretty songs and stained
glass, this is what you really are. Shambling meat. Our true fear
of the zombie was never that its bite would turn us into one of them. Our fear
is that we are already zombies. – David Wong
Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have
accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for
ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away.
We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the
slaughterhouse.
-Alan Moore
Simon de Montfort trotted back and forth on
horseback and looked down on the poorly fortified city of Bram: A once safe
refuge for the Cathar heretics, but no longer.
Three or four pillars of smoke rose over the fallen town. Simon didn’t really care about Bram, he had
bigger prizes in mind, Cabaret and Toulouse, but Bram was to be the start of
that campaign. Alix had brought in more
crusaders from the North, God bless her, men eager to practice the art of
conquest, and receive indulgences from the Church, but without the long travel
to the Holy Land. And they were all
under Simon’s command.
For a second, Simon froze on his horse: The buzzing.
Occasionally he would hear it. He
knew the headache would follow, and there it was … the pain that seared, but in
a flash, he knew what he had to do.
Sometimes, Simon believed these were messages from God himself … opening
His mind to his foremost warrior against the Cathar Heresy. Now, he knew exactly what to do. He shouted orders down to his captains on the
field of battle. The look of horror on
their faces, testified that they had heard him correctly. He shouted the orders once again, so there
would be no doubt.
This would make the fall of Cabaret all the
easier, a demoralized enemy was a beaten enemy; they just didn’t know it
yet. But Simon knew it, and he could see
from Sir LaFabre’s face that his captains knew it too.
One week later the watchman of the fortress
of Cabaret rubbed his eye as he witnessed a strange procession make its way on
the road towards the castle. A line of
fifty men walking single file, each with one hand on the man ahead’s
shoulder. As they drew nearer, he saw
that they were not men at all but grinning demons garbed as men. He yelled down, finally, in alarm but as he
did so, he saw them more clearly. These
were not demons. These were soldiers,
wearing the yellow cross of the Cathar loyalists, compatriots. But what had been done to them could only
have been the work of demons. Though
they looked like grinning skulls, there was a reason. Their eyes had been gouged out. Their noses and lips sliced off. Only their leader was spared one eye so he
could take them to Cabaret. Simon de
Montfort had made his point.
copyright 2017 Diana Hignutt
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