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Prologue

 While there is no peace in the soul,There is only evil and darkness in it,that will be damned man from birth to ages.Fall on his race with a curse. Given only as long as  While the sinless child  They won't let you under the axe.

   The red winter sun shone dimly on the towers darkening at sunset. Flashes of fire illuminated the battlements and the jagged stones in them. Black snow covered the roofs, and acrid smoke obscured the eyes. The once rich monastery of Saint-Catherine now burned like a great fire. Clouds of crows, covering the sky, circled over him. What happened to the dwelling of the brides of Christ, which even corrupt churchmen considered a model of virtue and Christian humility? Where did the elderly priest come from in the nunnery, now nailed to a cross made of unplaned roughly knocked together boards with a white beard fluttering in the wind? His body, blue from the cold, was black in places with soot and blood, and from his clothes there was only a dirty rag on his loins. A scratched face without eyes, with tatters instead of a nose and ears, was turned to a bearded giant in black armor, moreover, it was impossible to make out whether the armor was black in itself or from the soot and blood of the people tortured and killed by him. A woman was standing next to him in a burgundy dress and a black cape. Her clothes were covered with dark stains, and her pale face contrasted sharply with black soot stains on it. The man in armor laughed out loud, a rough and mocking laugh. The woman looked at the crucified man with wide eyes, leaning forward. She seemed to want to absorb the remnants of the life of a dying old man. Suddenly, she grabbed the bearded man's sword and jumped to the cross. The man in armor laughed out loud, a rough and mocking laugh. The woman looked at the crucified man with wide eyes, leaning forward. She seemed to want to absorb the remnants of the life of a dying old man. Suddenly, she grabbed the bearded man's sword and jumped to the cross. The man in armor laughed out loud, a rough and mocking laugh. The woman looked at the crucified man with wide eyes, leaning forward. She seemed to want to absorb the remnants of the life of a dying old man. Suddenly, she grabbed the bearded man's sword and jumped to the cross.

“They say angels have no gender,” she called from below. - During your lifetime, rumor called you a saint. A saint, too, should not have sex, so that his nature would not tempt him to sin. Now let's see who you are.

         She pried the bandage dangling from the old man's belt with the tip of her sword and yanked it off.

- Ah, you're an ordinary man. Well, then you will be holy to the end, and not just in words. And you will enter heaven as an earthly angel.

         Her flowing black hair made her look like a mythical sorceress, and the sword in her hand made her look like an ancient Greek mad fury. Ignoring the weight of the sword, she swung and struck the crucified old man. Blood gushed out in a fountain, flooding her face, and the old man's scream drowned out the sound of the fire.

Bravo, Katherine! yelled the bearded man in armor, slapping his chained thighs. “Saints have no place on earth!” There is a place on earth for mortals like us! Besides, today is our wedding day.

“And the eve of the birth of your Savior,” the woman added, wiping her face with her cape. "Isn't that right, Saint Gilbert?" she shouted to the crucified man. - After all, your theologians have appointed the day of the Nativity of Christ on the twenty-fifth of December. Too bad today is not June 6th, Satan's birthday. You would be from me and my husband a gift for his holiday. And so you are just a sacrifice to your vengeful god, who only knows what to punish. Where is he now? Why doesn't he save you and those stupid sheep? - The woman pointed with a sword at the corpses of nuns scattered around the yard. - You, God, we praise! Take your creation! and she laughed harshly as she tossed aside her bloodied sword.

         For some time, the eyeless, castrated old man hung helplessly on a pole. However, when the sun was almost hidden behind the fields and hills, and darkness fell on the earth, he arched, as if he had gained strength, and shouted from a toothless, bloody mouth with torn lips:

- Bertrand de Go! Former Knight of the Order of Jesus! Murderer, apostate and atheist! I, Gilbert Orsi, abbot of the monastery of St. Charles, which you destroyed and burned, I curse you, your dishonorable woman, Catherine le Muy, and your entire family to the thirteenth calendar! Through me, our God is addressing you, who is now calling me - be damned! May you and your children know the horrors to which you doomed the innocent! Every descendant of your union will be an outcast and cursed by God! Atonement will be accomplished by the voluntary sacrifice of your thirteenth descendant for all of you. And if not, then everything will start again until the end of time! This place will remain cursed forever along with your kind! God, take my soul!

     In the last impulse of life, Gilbert Orsi stretched out on his cross, and the limp body, twitching, drooped.

- How right I was! shouted the woman whom the gray-haired abbot called Catherine le Muy, clenching her fists. - He should not have been crucified, but left in a bag with cats. So that they not only scratched out his eyes, but also pulled out his filthy tongue!

- Right, right, - waved his hand in an iron glove, a bearded man in armor, called Bertrand de Gau. “However, it was necessary to crucify him. How else would you emasculate it? Simply, before the crucifixion, his tongue had to be cut off. But it worked out so well. I was particularly impressed by the castration scene. Find his personal belongings. This is our trophy. He will be my talisman tonight. Do you still remember - today is our wedding night?

- I remember. She must be special.” The woman's eyes lit up. “Your heir must be special. So, we will spend our wedding night on the altar in the church. And may God watch over us. If he is, then in the same place he will punish us for sacrilege, and even on the day of his birth. If not, then let him give new life.

Not bad, Katerina, not bad, - the bearded man grinned. - Wherever I just took different girls, from maids to duchesses. And in the hayloft, and on the pitching ship, and in the royal castle. But in the church, and even on the altar, never. Let's go, - He grabbed the woman by the hand and dragged her to the open doors of the church.

         A small handful of soldiers clad in light armor wandered around the territory of the monastery, either bending down to interrupt the torment of another half-naked nun with a sword blow, or exchanging greasy jokes with the others over the still living victim. From time to time the cries of women being raped and tortured could be heard. One nun in the remains of her robe, kneeling in front of a soldier, licked his swollen penis. The soldier was holding her by the hair with one hand, and in the other he was clutching a crossbow aimed at her throat. The face raised to the sky with closed eyes expressed bliss. Waves of pleasure ran through his body. Finally, at the peak of pleasure, he screamed and twitched especially sharply. An arrow accidentally fired from a crossbow pierced the woman's throat in the blink of an eye, and her agony mingled with the supreme pleasure of her killer. When the killer came to his senses

"Baron Bertrand will appreciate it," he muttered, drying himself off. “Coming together is much better than just a 'barbarian kiss',” and he laughed an evil laugh. Standing over the body, he looked around. His comrades, tired of today's events, were sleeping side by side where they could. Nude and half-dressed, whole and disembowelled bodies of nuns were lying around right there. One half-dead woman tried to crawl away. Her torn clothes, matted hair and wild eyes gave her the appearance of a village beggar. However, a pale, once beautiful face, thin graceful hands now covered in mud and blood, said that earlier it was, if not a noble lady, then not a commoner. The soldier approached her and roughly shook her shoulder.

- Hey, you! Help me clean up the bodies. The living have no place among the dead.

         The woman looked up at him. She didn't seem to hear him. Then the soldier jerked her up and pushed her towards the nearest corpse.

“Take her by the legs,” he shouted to the woman in the face, and put her hands on the naked legs of the victim. Then he walked around the body and took it by the shoulders. There was no face on the corpse, it was crushed by an iron glove. Pieces of brains in an open skull and an eye on a pink thread dangled in time with his steps. The mad woman only hindered him. She walked, stumbling and falling all the time. Finally, the soldier apparently got tired of it. He walked up to the woman and, without saying a word, with a sweeping cut off both of her hands, still holding the stiff legs of the corpse. The woman screamed and fell to her knees. The soldier kicked it like a sandbag and dragged his burden to the cesspool.

         When he was dragging the last, twelfth victim, another soldier woke up from sleep. He waddled over to the cesspool and unbuttoned his pants.

- Wait a minute, Gilles, - said the third soldier who came to his senses. “I heard that the Cathars used to have intercourse with the dead so as not to produce living sinners.

         His two comrades looked at each other.

- Do you want a dead one? For what? There is still alive, - the first soldier waved his hand in the direction of the nun mutilated by him, who, curled up in a ball, lay not far away and quietly howled.

- And I want to try, - said the third, and quickly crawled to the cesspool, unbuttoning his pants as he went. The second soldier shrugged his shoulders and stepped aside to continue his work. The first soldier looked at them with disgust and went to the victim crippled by him. The woman no longer howled. She lay like that in a ball. Her open eyes revealed nothing. Not a cloud of steam escaped from the half-open mouth. She seemed to be dead. The soldier spat and grabbed her by the shoulders. The rest, meanwhile, finished their work. The one who wanted to try to copulate with a dead woman spat savoryly on the ground.

- What is it? – grinning, asked the second, coming up to him and buttoning his pants on the go.

- A log is a log. German girls, for all their coldness, are still better than cold dead women.

“At least you have something to compare with now,” the first one said grunting, throwing his burden. “Wake up the others, otherwise in this cold we will all freeze like them,” he nodded his head in the direction of the corpses.