Knight of the Cross by Steven A McKay

blasphemers to continue their evil ways, I can assure you. Tell us what we need to know to stop them.”
    Leontios nodded, hope flaring in his eyes. “They believe I'm still one of them; that's why I'm still alive. I discovered some wild mushrooms that, when ingested, make my pupils enlarge as theirs do when they...partake of Dagon's victims' blood...Don't ask me how it works, but it makes them insane – the blood-lust carries even good people away into a vicious madness. They don't remember what they did when they awake in the morning back in their own beds.”
    “Is Father Vitus involved?” Sir Richard asked.
    Again the merchant shrugged. “Almost everyone in the surrounding villages is involved in one way or another. But only those with black eyes are part of it; the rest do nothing through fear of retribution. It is said Dagon can enslave a soul, even in the afterlife.” He shuddered before continuing in a small voice. “Father Vitus is, I believe, Dagon's high priest.”
    The knight was shocked by the man's assertion. It had become more and more apparent the Greek priest was involved, somehow, in the disappearances, but...high priest of Dagon? Nothing they'd seen in St Luke's suggested the man was so intimately involved in the twisted religion. His eyes were normal and when he prayed to God Sir Richard would have sworn the man was as devout in his Orthodox belief as the Hospitaller was in his own Catholicism. Sir Richard simply couldn't believe it.
    The traders had packed away their wares by now and the market was silent around them and Leontios's face twisted in panic as he realised his collusion with the Hospitallers might be noted.
    “Here, take this and sleep with it by your side.” He pressed a small, flat stone into Sir Richard's gauntleted hand and the knight examined it curiously. It was inscribed with the symbol they'd seen on the house on the outskirts of the town; a line with five smaller lines branching off it, like a tree. “It'll protect you,” the merchant promised, “as it protects the buildings you've seen with the same stones outside. I must go now – if they discover I'm helping you they'll kill me as they did my wife.”
    He pulled away from the knight's grasp and headed off into the shadows. “Come to me again if you need me. But act quickly – Dagon is coming!”
     
     
    * * *
     
     
    Sir Richard's rest was plagued by dreams and nightmares that night. Dagon appeared again, the paralysis that had held the knight fast to the bed previously returning along with the monstrous stick-figure, who stood looking down on him from its faceless head high above. The terrified Hospitaller tried desperately to reach for his blade, or stand up, or even just to scream, but he was held motionless against the bed as the monstrous figure leaned towards him.
    The knight had been close to death many times before but facing your own doom while holding your sword in your hand like a man was nothing compared to the crushing, hopeless sense of terror he felt as Dagon reached out to tear his unresisting body apart. An image of his two young sons came to him and a wave of sadness engulfed him as he realised he'd never see them again; never teach them to wield a sword, fish in the Calder or ride a horse.
    Suddenly, just as the horrific head and slender arms were about to take him, the apparition shrank back and stood, motionless. A moment later, the black figure left the room and the knight rose with a strangled, choking cry, clutching the inscribed stone Leontios had given him.
    Praise be to God, it had worked. The stone had worked!
    Relief flooded through him and after a time his breath slowed, his heartbeat returning to it's normal, steady rate until finally, exhausted, he began to drift back into sleep with a small smile on his lips.
    Then the realisation hit him like a crossbow bolt to the guts. After everything that had happened over the past few days, it finally sank in, and his breath caught in his