Damned

Tarn Richardson

Description

1914. The Outbreak of WarIn the French City of Arras, Father Andreas is brutally murdered and the Catholic Inquisition sends its most determined and unhinged inquisitor to investigate. Poldek Tacit's mission is to protect the Church from those who seek to undermine it. At any cost.As Tacit arrives, British and German soldiers confront each other across the horror that is No Man's Land and a beautiful French woman warns Lieutenant Henry Frost that there is a dark and unnatural foe lurking underground more awful than even Tacit can comprehend.

Sujets

• Fantasy
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913227203
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE FOR THE DAMNED
“A kind of three-way mash-up of horror fiction, war novel and ecclesiastical thriller… works surprisingly well”
Daily Mail
“Gripping …. sets Richardson up as an author to look out for”
The British Fantasy Society
“They don’t make them like this anymore. But they really should”
Lee Markham, author of The Truants
“The historical elements are fascinating, as is the author’s twist on the werewolf mythos… the brooding, conflicted Tacit is the most compelling element… will leave readers looking forward to the next installment”
Publishers Weekly
“Allegorical and erudite, this imaginative first volume establishes a world, a monolithic villain, and a catapult for Tacit and Isabella, Sandrine and Frost to confront the evil lurking in the volumes to come”
Kirkus
“Richardson can definitely write a rattling good tale, with page-turning suspense that never slows down… Poldek Tacit, a violent but oddly honorable version of Graham Greene’s ‘whisky priest’, is a perfect fit in this world gone mad”
Kingdom Books
“The atmosphere drips with dark fear of the unknown and, eventually, the unknown’s bloody leavings. This is definitely not one for the squeamish”
Bookbag
“Fantastic… the best evocation of the First World War I have yet read. You really can smell the cordite. Better than Birdsong . The author’s prose is elegant and visceral”
Ed Davey, author of Foretold by Thunder and The Napoleon Complex
“Werewolves meet WWI history horror mash-up. Great brooding protagonist and razor-sharp historical detail’
Tom Bromley, author of Dead on Arrival
“Engaging, intense and full of visceral descriptions… a sublime work of dark fiction meets mystery, meets horror that recalls the likes of Anno Dracula , Hellsing and Constantine , with a hint of Fight Club ”
Intravenous
“Morally complex and fast paced, this is a gripping work of dark fiction”
Ginger Nuts of Horror
“A fascinating combination of alternate history, church murder mystery, and horror thriller all wrapped up in a nice dark fiction package”
Jim Riordan, Read This , Peabody Institute Library
ALSO BY TARN RICHARDSON

The Hunted (prequel)
The Fallen
The Risen
TARN RICHARDSON
THE DAMNED

THE DARKEST HAND TRILOGY BOOK 1
First published in the UK and the US in 2015 by Duckworth Overlook
This edition published by RedDoor
www.reddoorpress.co.uk
© 2019 Tarn Richardson
The right of Tarn Richardson to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: www.patrickknowlesdesign.co.uk
Map design: Joey Everett
Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pte. Ltd
For Linnie, my beginning, middle and end
and Sam and Will, everything in-between
In memory of Harry Garbutt 1889–1915

PART ONE
“I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.”
Acts 20:29

ONE
23:32. M ONDAY , 12 O CTOBER 1914. T HE FRONT LINE . A RRAS . F RANCE.
As the first mortar hit the British trench, Lieutenant Henry Frost drew a line through the unit’s diary entry predicting a quiet night. He’d written the forecast more in hope than expectation, as if writing the words within the journal would somehow sway the actions of the Germans and ensure a quiet night. A private prayer for peace for just one night, for some rest from the infernal shrieks of falling shells, the bursts of distant gunfire, the intolerable cries of the wounded and the dying.
Already it felt as if the war had stalled, trapped under its own ferocity of hate. After the Germans rolled, seemingly unstoppable, through France, they had eventually found themselves snagged by the most fragile of lines east of Arras, checked by the British and French armies and stymied by their own over-stretched supply lines. Now the Germans had taken to unleashing an almost relentless nightly barrage of artillery upon the front and support lines. ‘The Evening Hate’ the Tommies called it. You could almost always set your watch by it. Eleven twenty-eight. Every night. On the dot.
In expectation, when the minutes ticked over the half-hour mark, Henry had checked his wrist watch and updated the diary entry. So when the first shell burst, he cursed himself for his impetuousness, his reckless optimism for ever now recorded in the diary under the firm black line through his naive prediction. Whilst only weeks old, this was a dreadful war. Already there was no time for optimism in this conflict.
Above his corrugated iron bunker, a rancid welt of grey-black earth burst amongst his soldiers, spraying metal, mud and blood into the night.
Someone yelled to take cover as a second shell screamed overhead. Moments before it fell, mortars hissed and clunked from emplacements along the German front line two hundred yards away, fierce red tongues licking the night sky.
The thunderous clap snatched the breath from all within its blast, as the second shell exploded in a ball of fire and gristle. Within the officers’ bunker below, lanterns swung and dirt fell from the ceiling onto Henry’s paperwork. He tilted his eyes upwards towards the incessant screams of the injured in the trench above, the hopeless cries for a doctor, the splattering patter of debris blasted high from the last shell.
Seconds later, three more shells fell on the trenches, all in quick succession, blasting bodies from their holes, obliterating corpses away from where they’d laid just moments before. Killing soldiers twice.
A fourth mortar landed, battering the entrance to the dugout and sending a pall of smoke and dust down into the yawning mouth of the front-line bunker. Henry crouched over the unit’s diary, as if the hard-backed tome was the most precious thing in the world.
“A doctor!” a voice wept through the barrage above, choking on soot and dust. “A doctor! For God’s sake, get me a doctor!” came the desperate plea, before a fifth mortar landed.
The Germans had found their range.
“Get your bloody heads down!” Henry cried down the front line, appearing from the bunker and leaping through the clods of showering earth to reach his men. He stuck his head between his legs and prayed like the rest of them.
Another shell landed ten feet away, depositing scrambling soldiers into no man’s land, leaving behind a sodden bloodied clump of mincemeat, splintered bone and boots where they had once stood.
And then, as quickly as it came, the barrage stopped.
Silence flooded into the trench, like the creeping cordite clouds blown on the midnight breeze. As the roar of the shells fell away, once more the screams of the injured, the moans of the bewildered, the pleading for mother, from those moments from death, renewed their dreadful chorus.
Cautiously, Henry looked up out of the hole he had found to shelter in, and peered both ways down the trench. He suspected a trick. In his memory, no onslaught had ever been so short. Out of the smoke and dust, figures stumbled over bodies and blasted earth. He was aware of weeping, the whinnying of horses, a vague ringing in his ears. Everything sounded very far away. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking, trembling like a newborn infant’s. He drew them into balls and crushed the shuddering out of them. After a month on the front line, nothing made Henry shake like artillery barrages. He’d amputated a man’s leg, half hanging by its sinews of flesh, with his knife, shot a German through the eye and stuck a bayonet into the ribs of a young German soldier no older than the boys who used to play football in the green opposite his house back home, watching him writhe and whimper for twenty minutes before dying, gagging on his tears and blood. He’d even ordered the shooting of a sentry for deserting his post without a second thought for the soldier or his family’s honour. But artillery barrages? They tore through every fibre of his body. It was the uncertainty of where the next shell would land, the indiscriminate roaming of their destruction which so terrified him.
When no further shells fell, he coughed the dust out of his lungs and found his feet uneasily, levering himself up and into the pitch of the trench. Without question the barrage had ended. Strange for it to have stopped quite so suddenly – for it to have been so short. A creeping cold fear drew over him.
“Get to the bloody walls!” he roared, trundling into a run. “Check your sentries!”
The enemy! They would be coming, storming across no man’s land, the thump of their boots, the glint of their bayonets in the moonlight.
“Check your posts! Check for approaching enemy!” Henry cried again, charging to an observation point and knocking the quivering sentry aside. He heard someone call, “There’s nothing there, sir!” as he peered wildly across no man’s land, wishing for a periscope to aid him. Smoke drifted across his view, smoke and moon-cast shadows. He stared wildly across the scarred ground between them and the German front line.
Nothing.
Nothing was coming.
But there was something. The noise from the German trench, gunfire, savage shrieks of alarm.
Henry strained to look closer at the enemy line. He could see its front parapet in the moonlight, recognise the tangle of barbed wire and the sacking of sandbags in front of it.
He narrowed his eyes and stared.
After the initial barrage the air was thick with smoke and sulphur. Battered and bloodied soldiers sa