I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) (34 page)

Upon reaching the first trees, my sister
Sasha gasped, bringing us all up short. A form stood waiting in the
dark of the branches, backlit by the moon. We feared spirits, a
man-beast of the forest, some creature of faery of which Maleva had
told us. Then it spoke and we knew a relief none of us had ever
expected. It was
he
. Vinci, the lord. He bid us follow him
and we did, certain he had some secretive mountain redoubt where we
could hide. We walked at a fast pace for some distance, and as we
did I spied the manifold weapons adorning the master’s form. How
could he bare such great weight, my brother Viktor whispered to me.
Then, we knew not.
The
lord
, Mina remarked, sotto
voce, looked prepared to singlehandedly fight a war. Her assessment
was not far off.

As we walked through the trees the torches
and voices behind us drew closer. We were four children and one
man. They were driven by blind rage and a hunger for revenge, fleet
of foot with sole purpose of mind. Theirs’ was a bloodlust, and
blood they would have. They had dogs. I remember how Sasha cringed
each time the beast’s howled, shivers of dread wracking her little
body. She knew these would not be like Maleva’s anonymous canine.
In my mind I was resolved. I would not see my little sister torn
apart by hounds.

We entered a vast clearing in the trees and
as we crossed it, the lord instructed us.
Go
, he said,
continue on to the trees beyond this opening, to the mountains
ahead.
Do
not
stop
,
do
not
look
back
, he would find us he told us.
But
lord
, he silenced me with a look and ordered us continue.
And we did, across the clearing and into the trees beyond, and when
we had gone some distance I pressed Sasha’s hand into that of
Viktor’s and I enjoined them continue, declaring that I must halt
to relieve myself, that I would catch up immediately. They hurried
on without a word, only little Sasha looking back at me in the
moonlight, almost as if she knew she would never see me again.

I hastened back to the clearing. The bays of
the dogs and the voices of men were distinct in the night. The
trees thinned about the clearing and it was here I stopped,
crouching low to look upon the glade and the lone man who stood
there. The lord Vinci was finishing his preparations. He had set a
number of weapons on the ground at intervals of several meters, and
as I watched he placed the last of these upright. It was a
bardiche, its shaft jutting into the night as the moon glittered
off its two foot blade.

Vinci’s movements were unhurried,
unconcerned. He looked a man eminently comfortable about his task.
When he had disencumbered himself of his many and varied armaments,
the lord turned and strode across the clearing, past all these
weapons, to the trees we had emerged from minutes before. It was
back into these trees, the howls of hunting dogs nearly upon him
now, that Vinci disappeared.

What was he doing? I waited where I was,
hidden behind a trunk. The valor of the lord Vinci, I thought, to
sacrifice himself that my brother and sisters may escape. For there
was no chance, I knew, that one man could prevail against so many.
The lord would fall in glorious, hard-fought battle, and I would
bear witness to his final stand. If need be, I would snatch up one
of the discarded weapons and do what little I could to slow the
advance once the lord had fallen, that my brothers and sisters may
succeed in their flight.

The clamor of the dogs in the woods rose in
intensity, and as I listened I could not believe my ears. The barks
and bays transformed to mad snarls and growls, which gave to
anguished bellows, then strangled whimpers and, finally, silence.
The din of men and women quickly drowned out the silence of the
dogs as I waited and watched. Vinci emerged from the trees, looking
none the worse for wear. He had slaughtered all those dogs, it
occurred to me, and I saw no weapon in his hand, so I was left to
wonder how he had accomplished such a task.

What happened in the next few minutes
transpired with such fluidity and poise, as if it had all been
planned in advance. As the first of the torches reached the edge of
the trees, there were screams of rage as the dogs were discovered.
The lord reached the first of his weapons, an ashen bow and a
quiver of bolts. Vinci took up the bow and fitted the first of the
arrows, turning to face the horde of men and women and soldiers as
they breached the clearing. They saw him and roared their
indignation. The lord did not hesitate. His first arrow punched
through the armor of the lead boyar and left the man standing there
wide-eyed in the moonlight, contemplating with his final breaths
the spurting aperture in his chest. Before this first combatant had
collapsed, Vinci had buried two more shafts in human targets.

In retrospect, those that followed should
have turned and ran back to the village, although even that place
would not prove a safe haven. But spying one man, alone in the
field, those that followed became maddened, blind with fury, and
charged headlong into that clearing, to their deaths. The lord drew
the bowstring back until the quiver at his feet was emptied and at
least a dozen forms lay inert on the grass. Seeing so many of their
own felled did nothing to deter the maniacs lunging across the
clearing with an assortment of farm tools, torches, and more
polished weaponry.

The lord turned and walked to his next
station, where he had set a halberd which he now took up to deadly
effect among his attackers. I watched this scene unfold in the
moonlight, this one man who stood against many, the many racing
headlong to their ends, and I watched in disbelief. My brothers and
I had fantasized about warfare often enough, even re-enacting our
takes on famed battles in the fields beyond our cottage or in our
stream. But this would be the first time I was to witness close
quarters combat, and its pitch transfixed me.

Vinci fought and deliberately controlled
ground, falling back less he become encircled. He never turned his
back to his opponents, stepping delicately backwards as he parried
and thrust with first halberd, then axe and sword. Every step of
the way left a freshly fallen opponent, yet still they came. It was
not until later that I understood the lord’s gaze itself drew them
on. So engrossed were they by his stare, so consumed by their own
hatred and enmity, that they ignored their fallen only to fall
themselves.

In the din of battle an arm was severed and
landed in my proximity. It still clutched the dagger it had wielded
ineffectively. I took my eyes off the fight before me long enough
to pry the dead fingers from the blade and take it up into my own
small hand. I did not think I would pose much of a threat with the
weapon, but it was better than being unarmed. I looked up and more
had fallen, my own retrieval of the blade having gone
unnoticed.

The final image I have of the lord in that
clearing is of him standing, the blood stained blade of the
bardiche in his hands, confronting the remaining boyars in their
armor. About them in the field lay the shattered and broken, the
dying calling out their last pleas and contritions, their torches
burning in the grass. There appeared some trepidation amongst the
boyars, whether from fear or training. Vinci tossed the bardiche to
the ground and faced them bare handed. I thought back to that first
night at the stream, when his hands had drawn my attention, and I
thought now that though he was disarmed, the lord Vinci had the
advantage. His apparent lack of defenses made brazen these last men
standing and they assaulted him one final time.

Something warned me, something conveyed to me
that I was not alone. A baneful hiss, much too close, drew my
attention away from the battle. There, a mere few steps from
myself, was Feigl. He had crept upon me in the night, his hands
reaching out before his body, intent on my throat. It did not occur
to me to strike him with my newfound blade. I cried out in surprise
and fled, the Ashkenazi plodding after me in the night. I turned
back as I ran but once, enough to see Feigl loping after me through
the trees and scrub, his face transformed by loathing into an ugly
mask, only an approximation of something that was once human.

I ran like I had never run before or since.
My heart beat with a fear and terror born of the knowledge that
this man was responsible for my father’s and brother’s death. That
he would murder my brother and sisters should he reach them. I had
to get to them first, to protect them. I ran and as I ran the noise
of Feigl’s clumsy pursuit faded behind me. It was not for some time
that I dared to slow and then to walk, glancing back furtively
along the path I had come, expecting at any moment to be set upon.
And it was only in slowing my pace that I felt the fatigue that had
come over my body, for my brother and sisters and I had been on the
run for some time that night.

With the coming of exhaustion I knew
hopelessness and despair. What if I were unable to reunite with my
siblings? To warn them before Feigl stumbled upon them in the dark?
But where was I? I stopped and stared and looked around, unable to
decipher my bearings. I looked up to the moon but it offered no
succor. I was a boy, alone and afraid, hunted in the woods. I
thought of father and his valiant efforts to forestall our
harriers, of Leonid rushing to his side.

In this, my time of despondency, I discerned
a light in the forest. A torch, much like the ones that had given
us chase earlier in the evening. Yet this time there was something
different. For one, the torch was receding and not pursuing. Sasha!
Viktor! Mina! My siblings I thought. I considered calling out to
them but knew if the dreaded Feigl was nigh my cries would surely
draw him. Instead I ran again, silently, following the glint of
light that threatened to outdistance me at any moment. The flame
would pass behind a copse of trees and disappear and I would come
up short, staring in disbelief and growing desperation. To have
found my little Sasha only to have lost her again, how terrible a
fate a young boy should suffer.

And then the light would appear again, in a
direction completely opposite that which I had been trailing. So
relieved was I to spy its luminosity once more I thought nothing of
its sudden relocation and barreled headlong into the wood, barely
containing my cries as I drew ever closer to its bearer. I burst
from a thicket into another clearing, a landscape barren of root
and brush, and beheld the carrier of the mysterious flame.

The thing stood tall on two legs like a man,
but it was hirsute unlike any man, covered from head to foot in
tufts of wild, black fur. Its foot was cloven and it bore a club.
Its eyes glowed like coals in the night, offset by the moon glow.
It held one hand aloft and from its palm glowed the radiance I had
mistaken for torchlight.

Surfacing from the forest, I stopped abruptly
and gasped in awe at this beast before me. Maleva had warned my
siblings and I of Leshii, spirit guardians of the forest.
Mischievous beings, these fairies delighted in waylaying travelers
and in misleading the lost. Maleva had told us of the ways to
appease the Leshii, but I was far from home and had no porridge to
offer the creature before me. I looked down impotently at my own
hands and the dagger in them, realizing they would do me little
good should the Leshii strike. Leshii, the gypsy woman had told us
in a hushed tone, thrilled in tickling the hapless to death.

The Leshii looked upon me and laughed, a
hideous, phlegmatic chortle that sent shivers through me. Frozen
with panic—of this thing before me and the murderous Feigl
somewhere behind—I stood my ground. Perhaps the Leshii mistook my
petrifaction for resolve. Perhaps it had had its fun and meant a
child no harm. Whatever the case, the spirit transformed before my
eyes into a bird and fluttered off into the night, leaving me on
the desolate stretch of land.

Though the Leshii had departed, I was again
not alone. Low, full-throated growls came from the trees I had left
moments earlier. I knew what they were immediately. I had heard
their distant howls many a night prior, walking home with my
brothers and sisters, safe within the confines of our village
borders. Here in the wild, on their terrain, there would be no
shelter for me. Mountain wolves. Feral beasts, long in fang and
claw, ravenous after the bitter winter. As I watched first one,
then a second and finally a third stepped from the trunks into my
sight.

I hefted my dagger as if to show them,
clenching my fists. The nearest growled, the growl rising to a
snarl and then a howl until the three wolves stood baying at the
moon overhead. Off in the remote dark other howls answered back, a
chorus of hunger and ill intent. Long before the cries died off I
had turned and ran. As I fled I looked up to the looming mountains.
The dawn was beginning to color the peaks of the Transcarpathians.
I had no need to look back to know that the three gave chase. I
swore I could hear the flap of their jowls, saliva spewing from
cracked maws as they darted after me. I was nine years old, a boy.
I stood no chance. I had almost reached the opposite tree line when
they were upon me.

I turned and raised the dagger, a purely
defensive posture that fortuitously impaled the first lupine form
upon me. The mighty beast shrieked and bore me to the earth under
its immense weight. I was struggling to heave the furry carcass
from atop my person when its pack mates bore down on me. My blade
was buried deep within its torso, out of reach. Suddenly the safest
place for me was under the body of this dead wolf. I did what I
could to shield myself beneath it, but the snapping teeth of its
two compatriots tore into the flesh of my exposed arms and legs.
Their furious bites penetrated deep, striking bone, and I screamed,
screams of fear and despair. Fear, that these prying teeth would
drag me from under my cover and devour me. Despair, that I would
never see my little sister Sasha or any of my other siblings.