The Book of Kane (9 page)

Then the hallway was still, but for the death throes of a few wolves. For an instant the pack stood panting, tasting the warm salt of their victims’ lifeblood. Already sounds could be heard as the others responded to the alarm. The werewolf raised a chilling howl of maddened power, then led its pack dashing down the hallways to find the rest of these terrified weaklings, whose stupid pride it was to be man.

Sounds of the battle above them penetrated even to the cellar room where Kane was imprisoned. The guards dropped their dice and listened. “What the hell is that!” gasped Tali in shocked amazement. Kane jumped to the door to see what was happening.

Someone threw open the door at the head of the stairs and shouted down, “Come on! Hurry! Wolves! The castle’s full of wolves! Hurry or they’ll kill us all!”

The guards rose up in panic. Snatching their weapons they ran up the stairs to join their rallying comrades.
“Wait! Damn you! Wait!” Kane bellowed futilely. “Come back and let me out of here! Come back! Thro’ellet take you all!” He shouted after the last man had disappeared up the stairs, but it was useless. Either out of panic or distrust they had left him here. In disgust he envisioned the fight in the upper floors of the castle and its probable end. Bitterly he pictured himself sitting here helpless while the werewolf and its pack came to finish the prisoner trapped in his cell.

Kane strained to see the fastening of the door through the spyhole . He knew it was secured by a heavy wooden bar, for as they had thrown him in, be had automatically examined the fixtures of his cell. In the short glance he had had, it bad seemed that the iron fastenings that protruded from the stories of the wall, and upon which the bar rested, would be the weakest point. With this in mind he backed off across the cell, then hurled his over 300 pounds of bone and corded muscle against the unhinged side of the door.

He ricocheted painfully from the bruising impact. The door held solid. Making another attempt, he again tried the door. It seemed to rattle slightly more loosely. Perhaps the iron fastening was pulling away from its setting in the stone. But the jarring crashes against the unyielding door were dealing him brutal punishment. Altering his strategy, Kane launched himself in a flying kick at the spot where the bar reached across the door to the bracket. With startling agility for his bulk, Kane landed lightly after the blow. He knew the fantastic power such a kick could deliver when properly executed.

He lashed out again. And again. Teeth set in determination, he battered the door of his prison relentlessly. The iron bracket would give sometime, he was certain. But how much time was left to him, he could not guess.

Within her chamber Breenanin listened in terror to the fierce struggle outside her door. She had awakened with these sounds in her ears—the shouts of the castle’s defenders and the enraged snarling of the wolves. The death cries of man and beast. She tried to imagine how the battle was turning, but from her chamber she could tell little. And the scenes offered by her terrified imagination drove her to hysteria.

On Kane’s warning she had provided herself with a silver dagger, although the weapon seemed laughably inadequate. In addition she had tied a silver chain across the fastenings of both tier door and the shutters of her windows. She had little faith in their efficacy, but it had been something she could do.

The fight now seemed to be moving to another quarter, for its clamor was growing dim. What could be happening out there? she wondered. From what she had heard, evidently a great pack of wolves had invaded the castle.

A sudden rattle on the stories outside one of her windows caught her attention! In abject horror Breenanin riveted her eyes on the shutters. From without now came unmistakable sounds of something scraping and clambering upon the ledge!

A heavy blow smote the shutters, caving them back dangerously! Petrified with terror, Breenanin watched the fastenings with awful fascination. Another blow! And one more! With a brittle crack, the lock splintered and the silver chain snapped apart!

And through the wreckage of the shutters leapt—Henderin!

Her brother was almost unrecognizable. His fingers were torn and bleeding; his clothing disordered. There was stark madness in his rolling eyes, and his teeth gnashed wildly. Blood ran upon his face and spotted his chest.
He dropped to the floor in a crouch. With a bizarre blend of titter and growl, he began to stalk his fear-sickened sister!

Breaking from the spell of dread that bound her, Breenanin uttered a soul-tearing shriek and bounded across the room for the door. Behind her Henderin shambled, mouthing insane slobbering noises.

In panic she fumbled with the bolt of the door, pulling loose the silver chain. Gasping, she freed the bolt and shot it back! She swung wide the door!

And looked into the face of gore-splattered nightmare!

Howling in hideous glee the werewolf lunged from the crimson tiled hallway through the gaping doorway! For the moment it had chosen to allow its pack to fend for itself against the crumbling ranks of the castle’s defenders. Its red eyes brimming with unspeakable lust, the slavering demon stretched forth its talons for the terror stricken object of its desire.

Breenanin recoiled in absolute horror as the hulking abomination stalked across the room toward her. Henderin was forgotten in the face of this inhuman beast of scarlet streaked white that now crept toward her in dreadful certainty of its prey. In a moment the werewolf had her trapped in one comer of the bed chamber. The creature slowed, a snarl of fiendish laughter in its throat; it clashed together the awful fangs of its long muzzle, savoring to the fullest the piteous terror of its victim. In despair Breenanin hurled an urn at her attacker, but the werewolf disdained even to dodge, and the vessel smashed into fragments against its hairy chest. It moved toward her confidently.

“No!” shrieked a voice that had been stripped of its humanity. “No! You can’t have her! You said she would be mine!”

The werewolf halted and flung a contemptuous snarl across its shoulder to the frantic Henderin. The insane youth was gnashing his teeth and jumping about in the frenzy of his rage. Ignoring the, frothing madman, the creature returned to the focus of its dark appetite.

In a silent blur Henderin pounced upon the werewolf’s back! Driving his knees into the creature’s spine, Henderin dashed it to the floor; even as they toppled he locked his arms about its neck and dug his teeth into the flesh of its nape. Caught off guard by the human’s strike, werewolf and madman rolled to the floor before Breenanin’s feet. Henderin was a powerful man, and his strength was doubled by the surge of his insane rage. Pressing his advantage, he forced the creature’s snout into the stones, while continuing to crush his knees into its spine.

Reacting in the fury of its pain, the werewolf raked its assailant with its claws, at last securing a grip on the human. With a burst of strength it ripped the writhing youth from its back and hurled him across the floor. Henderin landed heavily, but rolled to his feet in time to meet the monster’s charge.

For a moment they lashed punishing blows at each other, neither of them able to secure a hold on his opponent. Then they flung themselves together in a clawing, gnashing embrace of deadly hatred; they struggled viciously for several heartbeats, and fell in a tangle on the floor. Over and over they rolled, as each sought to remain on top.

Freed front her comer, Breenanin shook off her paralysis of fear and darted across the room for her bed. Flight did not register with her—for the werewolf seemed inescapable. But she remembered Kane’s advice now, and in a frenzy she sought underneath the bedclothing . She felt a surge of hope as her small hand closed about the cold hilt of the silver dagger. Drawing the white, bladed weapon free, she turned to the thrashing combatants!

Henderin had neither the strength nor the means to press home the initial advantage of his sudden attack. Only luck and his berserk strength had made it possible for him to hold out this long. But now the werewolf was astride his struggling body. Locking its long arms about its victim’s chest, the monster squeezed him in a crushing embrace of death. Even as the ribs cracked rottenly, its razor-like fangs tore through Henderin’s failing guard and sank into the human’s neck! Ultimate blackness closed upon the youth’s tormented mind, as human muscle and bone proved unequal to the test. Overcome with blood-lust, his slayer greedily gulped down the gushing flow from the ruined throat of its victim.

Seeing her chance, Breenanin rushed upon the momentarily pre-occupied werewolf. Her lithe arm raised high; then she drove the silver blade with all the desperation of her fear and loathing into the creature’s unprotected left shoulder! It sensed the danger at the last moment and tried to avoid the blow, but too late! Only slightly off its target, the keen blade sheared through inhuman flesh and glanced along the scapula!

Had the dagger been as long as a real weapon, the stab would have been a mortal wound. Instead, the werewolf howled in unaccustomed agony and sprang to its feet. Only barely did Breenanin succeed in maintaining her desperate grasp on the dagger’s hilt, as the werewolf wrenched itself free in its lunge.

Its pale fur now matted with its own blood, the werewolf whirled to face its small assailant. Fury was in its eyes, but as Breenanin raised her dagger to strike again, something like panic also appeared. The dread held by the creature for the silver weapon was out of all proportion to a human’s judgment. But the inhuman mind recognized a threat to its existence—a threat that held all the more terror because of its unfamiliarity. Wounded and uncertain, the werewolf decided to try a safer strategy. Snarling defiance it sprang to the open window and leapt front the room to the courtyard thirty feet below.

Sick and shaken from her hideous ordeal, Breenanin slumped to the floor, moaning incoherent sobs. In her shocked state of mind she knew only that the ravening demon had left her—beyond this she could not understand. Weakly she dragged herself to the torn corpse of her brother. She realized dimly that his intervention had preserved her from an abominable fate, and with this came the recognition that this importunity had cost the life of her brother.

Forgetting his madness and the crimes perpetrated under its cloak, she fell upon Henderin’s mangled body and sobbed hysterically. She did not even hear the shuttling footsteps that pushed through the doorway behind her.

Baron Troylin staggered drunkenly into the room, his mind fogged with pain and horror. Behind him tottered two of his retainers, similarly weakened front numerous wounds. Troylin seemed to regard his shuddering daughter Without recognizing her. “All dead,” he intoned dully. “All dead but us. The werewolf even smashed in the door where the women were hidden and let his pack loose on them.” No one listened to Troylin, not even himself. Only his mind numbly recounted the events of the past half hour.

“Wolves everywhere. Those awful bloody fangs. Snapping. Leaping at you front all sides. Once you’re down they just tear you to ribbons. Somehow we stopped them. Their leader left them. Werewolf gone we could hold out against the rest. Kill the devils. So damn many though. Drove them off somehow. Finally they stopped coming. Don’t know if they’re all dead too, or just run off. But we’re all that are left.”

He stopped his mumbling and stared dumbly at his daughter. Slowly his eyes began to focus. He saw her stretched beside the scarlet stained body of… Recognition dawned. Screaming an oath he raced to his son’s side and flung his daughter away. “Henderin!” His soul broke under the shriek of anguish. “Henderin! My son! Not you too!” He collapsed in the hysteria of his grief.

Breenanin recovered somewhat. Her father and his men had returned. She was safe with them. Hesitantly she laid a hand on his heaving shoulders. “Father,” she stammered.

His face snapped upward to gaze at her. In his eyes the light of madness burned. The baron had been a simple, straightforward man. During the nights of fear he had lived under strains unimaginable to his worldly mind. And under the relentless terror and slaughter of this final battle with the wolves, he had seen the comfortable world that he knew fall to crimson destruction. Death had brushed by him everywhere, and now he looked upon the mutilated corpse of his son, his most beloved possession. With the crushing weight of grief and horror, his mind had broken.

Now he stared at his daughter’s bloodstained nightdress. She recoiled before the soulless gaze of a stranger. “You!” shrieked the baron shrilly. “You!” He clutched the silver dagger which Breenanin had dropped and lurched to his feet. “You killed him! You’re the werewolf! You killed them all!”

Mouthing insane curses, Troylin grasped his terrified daughter. The silver blade flashed downward! A gasping shriek of agony. Sound of a soft form failing to the floor. White hands strained as they plucked ineffectually at the pain.

Stillness.

He gazed at her fallen form. Death eased the lines of fear and pain. Below her left breast a spreading crimson over her white gown, pale flesh. Red on white. Tumbling images through his mind. Red on white over and over. Days, nights of red on white. So much red. So much white. And the end?

A harsh snarl behind him broke off his kaleidoscopic thoughts. Troylin ran to the doorway. The werewolf had returned.

One retailer was already dying, his throat ripped open from the savage fangs that had struck without warning. While they had stood there gaping at their master’s madness, death had stolen upon them from behind. Troylin watched in the agony of disbelief as the werewolf brushed aside the other’s frantic sword thrusts and crushed his neck in its taloned hands. The creature was unkillable then!

It turned at last to the baron, scarlet fury blazing in its eyes. Unarmed, he backed away in horror, pitiful pleas slobbering from nerveless lips. The creature advanced relentlessly, arms outstretched and a low growl in its throat. Something pushed against the baron’s back. It was the balcony railing! He could retreat no farther!

With a howl the werewolf lunged for him! It raised the screaming man high above its head. Then it threw him from the balcony, arcing him high over the great hall. With a sickening crunch, the baron’s body bounced upon the stone floor, but half a step from his place at the high table.