Tales of the Old World (113 page)

It did not take long for the struggle to become a rout. Nor did it seem that
the monster was content to allow its attackers to escape. Bellowing its awful
roar once again, the huge scaly giant lumbered after the fleeing men, pursuing
them into the village. Despite its bulk, the beast was unbelievably fast. Only
the fact that it caught some of the slowest early on and stopped to reduce them
to mangled piles of meat gave any of the villagers a chance to reach the
supposed safety of Wulfhafen’s buildings. The feeble structures did nothing to
stop the reptile’s rampage, however. As the grotesque creature entered the
narrow lane, it turned to face the first of the mud and wood huts. The beast’s
tongue flickered from its mouth, tasting the air, sensing the people cowering
inside. The beast bellowed again, battering the wall of the hut with its immense
bulk. Two hits were enough to collapse the wall and bring the thatch roof
crashing down upon the inmates of the building. The monster paused for a moment,
staring stupidly at the destruction it had caused. Then its eyes detected the
squirming forms struggling to emerge from the ruins. The beast descended upon
the rubble and screams again filled the night.

Gastoen and Karel remained with Veytman throughout the terrified retreat,
following their hetman into the more solidly constructed common house. The woman
Una gave a cry of alarm as the enraged men entered the meeting hall. A withering
glare from Veytman silenced the half-soused biddy.

“It is a daemon!” sobbed Gastoen. “It has come to punish us for our evil
ways!” Veytman ignored the incoherent ramblings and made his way to the stack of
tiny kegs piled beside the now empty weapons rack. The hetman lifted one of the
kegs removing its stopper. Normally employed to light the evil beacon fires,
Veytman now had a very different purpose in mind for Wulfhafen’s supply of
lantern oil.

“Beast or daemon, I am going to send that thing back to hell!” Veytman
growled.

“You cannot kill it! It has been sent by Manann to punish this town for
preying upon the sea! No one can defy the judgement of the gods!” Gastoen broke
into a trill of mad cackling, his mind crumbling under the years of guilt that
now fuelled his terror.

“Karel,” Veytman snapped, ignoring the boy’s mad father. “Help me with this!
Grab that torch and follow me! Tonight we will see what kind of man you are!”

Karel withdrew his arms from his father’s shoulders and raced to remove the
torch the hetman had indicated from its wall sconce. The two men hurried toward
the door, determined to put an end to the sounds of death and destruction rising
from the street outside, vowing to find the monster preying upon their village
and destroy it.

They did not need to find the beast, however. The beast found them.

The front door of the meeting house burst inwards, as if a fully laden wagon
had crashed into it. Splintered wood flew in all directions, the shrapnel
opening a gash in Karel’s cheek. The great grey and black hulk lowered its head
and slithered through the gaping hole in the wall. Once inside, the hissing
beast rose to its full height, seemingly oblivious to the dozens of wounds
bleeding all over its body. The head of the dwarf axe was buried deep in the
creature’s back, and still it showed no sign of injury. The monstrous brute let
its head oscillate from side to side, surveying the room with its reptilian
eyes, tasting the air with its slender purple tongue. Then the mighty beast
roared, the tremendous sound deafening within the close confines of the room.

The effect was immediate. Una shrieked again, scrambling for the rear door of
the meeting hall, disappearing through the portal with a speed and agility that
should have been impossible for a woman of her age and health. Roused from his
pain-filled slumber, Bernard focused his remaining eye upon the hideous reptile.
At once, the man was crawling across the floor, hurrying after the departed Una.
The creature made to pursue the fleeing wretch, but a much closer victim gave
the enraged brute pause.

Karel could not hear what his father was saying, his ears still ringing with
the monster’s mighty roar. Gastoen had run forward as the beast broke into the
meeting hall and had fallen to his knees before the hulking brute. To Karel, it
appeared that the man was actually praying to the huge reptile, a look of insane
rapture on Gastoen’s wizened face. The creature looked down at the figure bowed
down before its knees. The great brute brought one of its enormous clawed fists
crashing down into Gastoen’s head, the force of the blow making the man’s skull
and neck sink between his shoulders. Barely ten feet away, Karel watched as his
father expired, as his world was rent asunder. The man he had loved, respected
and admired was no more. The man he had looked up to all his life had been taken
from him in one instant of madness and carnage.

Karel gave voice to an almost inhuman cry of rage and loss and charged the
huge beast, the knife his mother had pressed upon him gripped firmly in his
hand. The knife impacted harmlessly against the reptile’s leg. With an almost
dismissive gesture, the hulking brute swatted Karel with the back of its hand,
sending the boy flying across the hall. He landed against the far wall, the wind
knocked from his lungs. The boy dropped to the floor, groaning the mixture of
anguish and agony that wracked his form.

Veytman yelled in fury and ran at the huge monster. The hetman hurled the keg
of oil at the beast with his left hand. The object flew lethargically across the
room, missing its intended target and breaking apart against the wall behind the
creature. The failure of the missile to strike its target did nothing to stop
Veytman’s attack. The man lashed out at the huge beast with the torch he held,
thrusting the flame upward into the monster’s face.

The creature hissed angrily, flinching away from the flame. Veytman cackled
triumphantly, pressing his attack. But he grew too bold, too certain of the
beast’s fear. The reptile bellowed again and lashed out with a massive clawed
hand. The claws tore through Veytman’s stomach, ripping his intestines from his
body. A river of blood fountained out of Veytman’s butchered flesh, sickly
yellow stomach matter staining the crimson cataract. Veytman fell to his knees,
blood filling his mouth. The last sight his dying eyes focused upon was that of
his own innards dangling from the creature’s claws.

As Veytman died, the torch fell from his nerveless fingers, rolling across
the floor to meet the spilt oil. Even as the lizardman stomped toward Karel, the
flammable liquid caught fire, turning the entire wall into a fiery blaze. The
monster turned away from the youth, staring with fear at the blaze behind it,
croaking its own terror.

Karel had only moments to act, seconds to overcome the fear gripping his
frame, the pain wracking his body. It was a moment to transform a boy into a
man. Karel turned towards the rest of the supply of Wulfhafen’s oil, smashing
the stoppers from the kegs with the end of the knife still clutched in his hand,
pitching the ruptured contents to the ground. The incendiary liquid splashed
across the floor, rushing to meet the flames on the other side of the room. The
creature turned, perhaps sensing what the boy had done, or perhaps merely
looking for another way to leave the building. Whatever its purpose, Karel did
not wait to find out. Hurling the torch at the pool of oil gathered about the
reptile’s feet, the young man leapt through the rear door of the common house.

The oil ignited at once, transforming the meeting hall into an inferno. The
monster tried to flee from the flames all around it, its primitive brain taking
long minutes to realise that its own flesh was on fire. The lizardman’s bellows
of agony rose from the blaze as the fire seared its scaly flesh.

Outside, the survivors of Wulfhafen emerged from the shelter of their homes;
gathering about their burning common house, watching the consuming flames lick
into the night sky. The huge beast trapped inside was a long time in dying, its
anguished cries ringing into the night for nearly a quarter of an hour. The
crowd remained through it all, silent and stunned. There was no sense of triumph
in the people of Wulfhafen as the flames consumed the horror that had descended
upon their tiny village. Survivors they may be; victors they were not.

Karel gathered the last of his possessions together and kissed his mother one
final time. The morning sun had barely peaked above the horizon; the first birds
were only just emerging from their nocturnal sanctuaries. Karel shouldered his
pack and made to leave the only home he had ever known. He could almost see
Gastoen again, sitting at the table, his weathered, cracked hands resting in a
cool bowl of fresh water, trying to soothe the pain from his tortuous labours on
the sea. He could almost see his father making ready to join the ship wreckers,
with all the guilt and shame that had shrouded the evil things he had done to
support those he loved. Karel could now understand the strange and frightened
looks his father had sometimes favoured him with. It had been the closest
Gastoen had ever come to voicing his truest fear, the fear that his son would
become himself one day, that the dark practice of Wulfhafen would live on
through his own blood.

“Where will you go?” his mother demanded, trying to fight back her tears.
Karel paused and caressed her tired, worn hand.

“I am going to go down to Marienburg,” Karel declared, looking away from his
mother for fear that tears would well up in his own eyes. “I shall go to the
temple of the sea god, see if the priesthood of Manann will have me for one of
their own. See if they will allow me to atone for the crimes of my fathers, and
my home.”

Karel kissed her again, and stepped out into the narrow lane that wended its
way through what was left of Wulfhafen.

Perhaps the village would fade away now. Perhaps it would somehow rebuild and
endure. Perhaps it would even return to its evil ways. For Karel, it did not
matter. He had found the answer to the questions he had asked his father. The
beast had not been a daemon, but could it truly be said that it had not been
sent by the gods? Had the terrible doom that visited the village not been
brought about by their own avarice and greed? Karel could not lead any of his
family or neighbours to atone for their misdeeds, for each man was steward of
his own soul.

So, the last son of Wulfhafen strode away into the morning light, taking the
first steps on the long road of his penance.

I am hatred. I am revulsion. If you know me and do not hate
me, you are evil. I have enough hate for myself.

The gibbet in Kurtbad was unoccupied. Swinging in the gentle breeze, the
empty loop of rope regarded the village like a macabre eye. The people of
Kurtbad slept, though they had gone to bed afraid. The two guards posted outside
the barn which served as meeting hall slumped against the wooden door, blankets
wrapped around them like shrouds. Their pitchforks lay discarded on the black
Averland soil. If the humble wind which shook the noose had been so bold as to
sniff the breath of these men, it would have smelt wine, much wine.

The midnight watch in the midst of an Averland witch hunt was not a duty to
face unfortified. The small stocks of wine, kept in Kurtbad for Taal’s Day of
Spring-return, had been cracked open and distributed to all the villagers. When
that day came, and it would be soon, everyone but the children would understand.

Now all that mattered was that a man had been killed.

Gunter pulled his woollen cloak tighter about his shoulders and made enough
noise to wake the form in the bed he had recently left—but got no response.
The thin moonlight didn’t help Gunter see whether she really was asleep. He
buckled on his sword, his since his father had died on a frosty night early in
the winter, and drew back the bolt on the door of the house which had come to
him the same way. Ice on the stone step cracked under his militiaman’s boots and
the breeze blew away the last cobwebs of sleep. Gunter found much solace in his
duty, the sole permanent militiaman in the village of Kurtbad, responsible for
more than a hundred men, women and children. He straightened his back and headed
for the barn to see how his new recruits were doing.

Anja waited for the door to close behind him before sitting up and lighting
the candle from the last coals which winked like dying stars in the ashen sky of
the hearth. She returned to bed via the door, where she drew the bolt again.
Gunter’s side of the bed was warm but cooling quickly. She crawled back to the
corner where she had curled like a cat on the night when Gunter fetched her from
her family, telling her mother that she would be safer with him. It was probably
even true. How could her mother, older now than most women in the village, tell
the militiaman, tall as a bear, he could not take her only daughter. It was for
Anja’s protection, after all.

Anja and Gunter were not married, and had he not been arguably the most
important man in Kurtbad, action would have been taken. As it was, many people
in the village muttered after she passed by and looked at her as if to see some
sign of her sin worn openly on her garments.

Anja curled up and thought about these things, looking at the candle flame
and how the beeswax melted and ran down the stem like tears. The candle cried
itself to death.

Outside the village, on the road to Nuln, the night was shredded by a
startled cry and a flash of blades. A man leapt from the back of a horse and
stumbled in the mud at the side of the road. Another man rolled on the ground,
the winter leaves sticking to his face, his wrist in his mouth. The struggle was
as bloody and quick as a dogfight. When it was over, the inadequate moon lit
only naked skin and cooling blood.