Temple Sword

Chapter 63 Shadow of the Cursed
From day one, the hunchbacked cripple has been around Antal like a ghost.The knight first noticed him at dinner, when the man appeared in the far corner of the dining room with a wooden bowl.He didn't touch the bread, the cheese, the meat, he didn't even look at it, took a steaming vegetable soup and left.

However, before he turned his back on the Templar and went off to eat his food elsewhere, his eyes briefly met Antar's, and they looked at each other for a moment before the cripple giggled, sounding like Coughed.

"Who is that, Dean?" Antal asked Ambrosius, who sat next to him, who shrugged.

"Just a poor man," he replied with his mouth full of food. "Leave him alone!"

"What is he doing here?"

"He was from the North," explained the abbot, "a rich landowner, a nobleman from the Highlands. He wanted his son to be a Templar and sent him to study with us. Every year he Supported the monastery with a lot of money. Then, about a year ago, Mate Chuck's men attacked his estate, they took everything they could find, burned every building on the estate, and slaughtered all who can be found.

The poor man's son, his wife, his mother died there...everyone he loved in this world died.And himself, trying to save his family, was trapped in a burning house.When he finally came out, everything was burned out, but he still fought like a living torch, and he attacked Matey Chuck's men, and then they took him down with a single blow, they must have I thought he was dead.The next day, the farmers found him, and he came all the way here with what was left of his body and soul, asking us for food and lodging for the rest of his life in return for his donations over the years.This kind of thing, you know, can't be turned down. "

Antal listened to the story in horror.

"Is this how Mate Chuck treated that man's family?" he asked in disbelief. "I'm going to report this to the king..."

"Never mind this, Antal," Ambrosius waved his hand, "This is not something the king should worry about. Over the years, there have been conflicts between their families, and Mate Chuck has finally quelled the opposition And the insurgents, maybe he's gone a little too far, but he's not overstepping his authority."

"He killed a family!" Antal retorted, "Do you think this is an acceptable little private matter?"

"Don't misinterpret my words, I didn't say it's a small matter!" The skin on the Abbot's face tightened, "I just said, it's a matter between their two families, and the poor guy knows it. Why do you think he Come here instead of rushing to the king for justice?"

"What you said has some truth." Antar admitted.

"Look," said Ambrosius with a sigh of relief, "who knows what he might have done to Mate Chuck! We don't know what happened, but the judgment is not my business, it's God's business, I Just taking in someone who needs help."

Antal didn't argue any further, but he couldn't help noticing that the last time he was here, the abbot still thought he was a good fit for the role of judge, until, of course, William talked him out of the idea.

He was convinced that Ambrosius was hiding something from him, and the abbot had embarrassedly avoided mentioning the man's name, and was visibly terrified at the possibility of the king investigating the former highland lord.

Antar was determined to find out who this man really was, what his name was, and what Ambrosius had not mentioned.The abbey was not large, he thought, and there was no way they hadn't met, and if the man could talk and not lose his mind from the horrors he endured, the knight should have no trouble finding out the truth from him.

—

In the days that followed, the old cripple appeared near Antares several times, but the knight could only see him out of the corner of his eye.When he wanted to turn his gaze away, the old man disappeared like a shadow.They had never met face to face, so they could not talk to him, and the mysterious figure followed him and stared at him until Antal noticed, and this unpleasant feeling grew stronger in his heart.

He was there when Antal went to church in the morning sleepy, when he took care of Sarecher, when he taught the apprentice knights, when he went to the river to bathe and drink water... Knight of the Lily Constantly felt that eyes were watching him, but whenever Antal spoke to him, the old man would disappear as if using a witch's witchcraft.And when he went to look for the mysterious man himself, the lame man avoided him as if he had never existed.Stranger still, the other knights knew nothing of his whereabouts.

"Yes, he lived here, he was always in the monastery," they said, "but no one knew where he slept or hid." Maybe he didn't even have a room of his own...

When Ambrosius questioned the old man in Antares, he often changed the subject.

"What do you care about that unlucky guy?" He waved his hand absently, "If you have any news from the French court, please tell me!"

In this way, Antal was unable to speak a word to the former highland landowner, but he could always feel that there were eyes behind him.

—

The old man finally showed his feet on a nail.

The crooked nail was rusted and useless, and someone had driven it into Sarecher's hoof near the stable.Antar thought this sign was very strange, because he knew very well that this is what witches usually do when they want to curse someone. He didn't know why someone would curse Sarecher, but he probably guessed who was in his horse. There were rusty nails on the hooves.

So he set a trap.

Antal worked late into the night in the yard, handling his horse and equipment, honing his weapons, and then retired alone to the church to pray and wait for the moment to come.When everyone was ready to leave for rest, he followed them and was the last to step across the threshold of the monastery.Before entering the building, though, he stomped hard on the ground with his right foot, leaving a sufficiently conspicuous mark.Then he hid in the dark corridor and waited patiently.

He didn't wait long, and the old guy soon appeared.Crouching down, grinning in satisfaction, he drove another rusty nail into the toe of Antal's boot, which he had been holding on to tightly, and when he was done he crouched punctured He muttered to himself in a low voice in front of his boots.As he groaned and scrambled to his feet, Antar stepped out of the darkness and pointed his drawn sword at his throat.

The summer moonlight shone on the sword, illuminating the astonished face of the old man.Even now, Antar felt nothing familiar about his thin, wrinkled, dark head, his once-dislocated jaw, and the few strands of gray hair that sprouted from his mottled scalp.But those bloodshot, crazy swollen eyes made him feel familiar, but he didn't remember seeing them there.

"Do you think you're a witch, old man?" he asked softly, frowning. "You want to curse me, that's why you put a rusty nail in the horse's hoof, and now it's in my boot?"

Antal's sudden shock melted from the old man's face, his mouth contorted into an eerie smile, revealing his barren and hollow rotting teeth.A sound resembling a faint cough came from his throat, and he laughed.

"Don't you know me, Antal, son of William Barto?" he asked in an inhuman hoarse voice. "Don't you recognize your old friend? The Knight of the Lilies rides on his tall horse, looking at no one."

"Your name, heathen!"

"Guess what!" the cripple grinned.

Antar had had enough of these games, and he thrust his sword forward with a cautious gesture, drawing a small stream of black blood from the old man's neck.

"You robbed my room, damn it!" the man yelled, "and I was ordered to scare the basement and sleep among the rats! Maybe they were afraid of me..."

The knight's eyes widened.

"Zoutermon?" He finally recognized those eyes. "That's impossible!"

"But it's true." The man took a step back, keeping a safe distance from the blade.

"You're dead!" Antar said out of breath, "I saw it, I saw it with my own eyes, it was William who killed you!"

"Everyone thinks so," replied the cripple, "and they even dug a hole for me, imagine! When they started throwing dirt on me, they heard me cough, and I came back from the dead..."

Antal's hand hangs down, but he hasn't withdrawn his sword yet.He took a good look at Zoutemon.

"you look like……"

"Unlike a person, I know."

Antar remembered the horrible torso that Zortmund had turned into at the whip's whip.Now that he thought about it, he was no longer surprised that Zoutermund looked so terrible, like the wound he had received that day, even if he survived, it would not heal in any way.

"When I recovered a few months later, I wasn't alone anymore," said Zoutermon, or what remains of Zoutermon, "I became a monster."

"Why do you keep following me?"

"You know," Zoutermon moved closer to Antal, looking deeply into his eyes, "for a long time, I didn't know what I came back to life for, after all, this is not a complete life anymore! That day I Died really, I saw hell and came back from there. Now I know that I will never enter Heaven, and I know what kind of torture awaits me there.

I died and came back to life, and the only question that tormented me for years was why I had to return to this miserable body, and then I realized: we have a score to settle because of you, remember? "

"Stay away from me, you devil!" Antal pointed his sword at him again, "Get out of my sight, or I'll cut your intestines out right here!"

"You can't kill me!" Zotmund snorted in a dying voice, and laughed again. "Your uncle can't kill me, do you think you can? I have been to hell, and I have been helped by demons on the way. I didn't come back to be killed by a mortal like you!"

Antar refused to listen any more, sheathed his sword back, and struck the poor wretch with the back of his hand, knocking him down, the blood streaming from his slit face in no time.

"This is my last warning, you miserable bug!" Antar said firmly, not noticing that his stomach was shaking convulsively with fear. "If I see you from behind, smell your disgusting smell, or feel you, I'll kill you instantly! If you sneak up on my horse, I'll kill you too! I don't care about you Whether it comes from the deepest part of hell, I will send you back there with my own hands, and Satan himself can't help you!"

He turned his heels and walked away quickly, trying to leave the crippled Zoutermont behind as soon as possible.

The barking and inhuman laughter echoed on the walls of the monastery for a long time.

(End of this chapter)