The Werewolf and the Wormlord (17 page)

Still, it did make for a long wait.

At last, the head and shoulders of a huge and slovenly beast came slurching out of the swamp.

‘I am Kralch, Eater of Babies,’ said the giant, clearvoiced across a distance of a hundred paces.

‘Hi,’ said Alfric. ‘I’m Alfric Danbrog.’

He pitched his voice as if for battle, and loud and clear it carried through the night air.

‘Have you brought me a baby?’

‘Yes,’ said Alfric. ‘Can’t you hear it crying?’

‘Faintly,’ said the giant. ‘I’m somewhat deaf.’

‘Oh,’ said Alfric. ‘Sorry to hear that.’

So saying, Alfric took the bung from the first of his barrels and kicked it over. A light and combustible oil (distilled at great expense from the flesh of riverworms) spilt outward and spread across the swamp.

‘What are you doing?’ said the giant.

‘Pouring out a libation to the gods,’ said Alfric. ‘It’s a form of sacrifice.’

With that, he unbunged and overturned a second barrel.

‘Libation or no libation,’ said the giant, ‘I’m coming for the baby. If you’re still there when I get there, I’ll have you too.’

‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Alfric, and unbunged and kicked over a third barrel.

Kralch waded forward. Then the swamp shallowed, and the giant started to crawl. As it did so, it began to pant in a most hideous way. The truth was, the huge and hideous creature was in danger of expiring as soon as it dragged itself from the supporting watermuck of the swamp; and it put its very life in danger every time it came to claim a baby. One thing was certain: though the giant could crawl, it was totally incapable of standing up and supporting its weight on its legs once it was out of the swamp.

As the giant drew near, Alfric kicked over the last of his barrels. Then waited.

‘I did warn you,’ said the Eater of Babies. ‘If you’re going to run, you’d better start now.’

‘Oh,’ said Alfric coolly, ‘I think it’s you who’s going to do the running.’

So saying, Alfric produced a small jar and a pair of tongs. Alfric reached into the jar with the tongs and pulled out a small piece of metal. The metal looked grey by moonlight; and, had a stronger light been available, its hue would have remained unchanged.

As Alfric shook away the last drops of water, the metal burst into flames.

Alfric touched the flaming metal to his oil slick, which ignited. The swamp erupted. The giant screamed, engulfed by fire. It convulsed in agony. Kicked, clawed, howled and thrashed, and fought its way back into the depths of the swamp.

‘So much for that,’ said Alfric briskly.

Then he shivered, and set forth along the causeway.

Endless seemed that causeway, but at last the steps of the Spiderweb Castle were before him. Alfric climbed those steps and entered that place of death, the Castle of the Curse. As legend alleged, this was a place of the dead. Cold they were, their corpses ageless, frozen for centuries in the same positions.

The guards who held the castle gate never blinked as Alfric walked between them. He walked within, passing elders gathered in twos and threes in private conference; young lovers exchanging kisses and blisses in shadowed places; servants locked for ever in the hurry-scurry attitudes of hard-driven servitors.

At last, he entered the Grand Hall.

Again, legend was confirmed, for here candles shone with a ghostly phosphorescence, and the candles were not consumed by their own burning. It was silent, utterly silent. Alfric heard his own breathing, the creak of his own leather boots, the dry friction as a
frisson
of nervousness agitated his fingers to a spiderkick shuffle. His footsteps stirred the dust which rose, half-swirled then settled.

As legend said, there was the royal family. Alfric recognized them, just as he recognized their friends and retainers; for each was dressed according to rank and attainments. And there was the Princess Gwenarath; and, as legend said, she was passing fair. So fair that Alfric was moved to touch her cheek. He yielded to this impulse, but found the flesh cold, yes, cold, and as hard as marble. And he saw the dust of ages had gritted in the royal eyes, had settled in the folds of the royal cloak.

But she was fair regardless, and Alfric, despite himself, began to weep; for here a great evil had been done, and for this evil he had no remedy.

Alfric squeezed the tears from his eyes, and, angry at himself for thus sentimentalizing, he got down to business. Where was the queen? There. Proffering the mead to her husband. And he, a half-smile on his lips, was making as if he would take the cup from the gold-decked woman. A noble pair they made, and—

‘Let legend do the weeping,’ said Alfric, with willed and conscious brutality.

So saying, he went to the empty chair which stood beside the royal couple. And there was the sword, just as legend claimed. Sulamith’s Grief, a silver sword in a silver sheath. Alfric drew the blade, and it burnt brighter than the candles.

And—

Did the Grand Hall change?

Did he hear a faint whisper of the noise of revel? Did people silent for long centuries stir, if only by an eyelash? Did—

‘I imagine it,’ said Alfric loudly.

And knew it was true, yes, he had been imagining it. There was no noise, no life, and no hope of either. These people were long dead, however perfectly preserved their appearance might be.

Then—

Something did move.

Alfric saw it not, but heard it. A wrenching sound as metal tore free from metal.

Alfric nearly leapt out of his skin.

‘Who’s there?’ he said.

He drew Sulamith’s Grief and discarded the scabbard. The silver sword quivered in his hand. His heart quick-kicked. His eyes blazed red, alert for murder.

‘Who?’ he roared. ‘Who’s there?’

Nothing.

Nobody.

But something—

There!

Alfric saw it.

The sword.

The weapon was sheathed at the side of a swarthy warrior of undistinguished appearance, but it was sticking out from the hilt by a good fingerlength. Unless he was sorely mistaken, that blade was the thing which had moved. It was a plain black blade which had leapt (if Alfric was guessing correctly) from a plain black sheath.

Carefully, Alfric recovered the scabbard which he had dropped. He sheathed Sulamith’s Grief. Then he unbuckled the swordbelt belonging to the swarthy warrior. Gingerly, he drew free the plain black sword. Briefly, letters flamed green against the black of the blade. Alfric barely had time to read them, but read them he did, and what he read he would never forget:

‘Bloodbane be my name. A risk to all, not least to he who holds me.’

Alfric shuddered. He knew the history of this sword -for what Yudonic Knight could live in ignorance of the legends which told of its murders?

Still.. .

Alfric tested the heft of the weapon. While he put it to no test of strength, already he knew that the old iron was no wise weaker for all the ages it had lain here, derelict and abandoned. He knew. For the sword was speaking to him, its assurance wordless yet warm.

‘Hear me,’ said Alfric, swordhanded as he spoke grimvoiced to Grand Hall. ‘You who are dead. You who are living. You who are yet to be. Hear me. I come not as a thief. I come not as a looter. I come as a hero, and what I claim I claim as mine by right. I am the son of Grendel. I am the grandson of Tromso Stavenger, Wormlord of Wen Endex. I am rightful heir to the royal throne. By such right I claim this weapon.’

His voice died away.

Leaving Alfric standing there, alone and unanswered.

He smiled suddenly, wryly amused by his own heroic conceit; then he sheathed Bloodbane and buckled on the swordbelt which sustained the weapon’s scabbard. Then he picked up Sulamith’s Grief, and left.

On the steps of the Castle of the Curse, Alfric paused. The moon shone bright upon the swampland wastes, and he could feel the allure of the moon and his own swelling strength. On a whim, he drew the blacksword Bloodbane, and the old iron ran with white fire as he saluted the moon.

Alfric was still standing there in salute when the swamp giant Kralch erupted from the swamp not fifty paces away. Mud and water streamed from the monster’s shoulders as it slurred its threat:

‘You! I see you! You die!’

A stupid threat to make at that time and place, for it would have been the easiest thing in the world for Alfric to run back into the shelter of the Spiderweb Castle. But run he did not, for the bloody spell of the sword was upon him.

‘The moon approaches full,’ said Alfric, his voice clear-carrying across the strength. ‘Know you who I am? Know you what? The moon grows, and my strength likewise. My Change is almost upon me. My Change can be willed if thus I wish.’

Thus spoke Alfric Danbrog. He was drunk, intoxicated by the moon, by the sword’s own slaughter-lust, by a beserker-bom rage of exultation. All this was plain from his voice, and the giant sank back at the sound of it, for the monster was a cowardly creature at hear.

‘Come!’ said Alfric. Challenging. Demanding. ‘What stands against you? This?’ So saying, Alfric brandished the blacksword Bloodbane. The blade ran with silver and with fire. ‘Come,’ said Alfric, ‘this is nothing to fear. It is but a splinter.’

But the giant, frightened of this battle-boast warrior, submerged and withdrew.

‘Well,’ said Alfric, in disappointment. ‘Be like that, then.’

And then he sheathed the sword, and sanity returned, and he began to shudder, and a cold sweat broke out on his skin. Then he picked up Sulamith’s Grief - he had dropped that weapon while focusing on his challenge -and set forth for the swampshore.

When Alfric reached the shore, a nagging crying was still coming from one particular grassclump.

‘Oh well,’ said Alfric, with a sigh. ‘I suppose I can’t leave the thing.’

And, with the greatest reluctance, he went to investigate. As he had feared, there was a baby lying in the grass. It was swaddled in some dirty sheeting and cradled in a basket.

Alfric picked up the basket. The handle promptly tore free, precipitating the baby to the ground. There it bawled prodigiously. Alfric chided himself. He should have known nobody would be so foolish as to waste a good basket on a surplus baby.

What now?

If he picked up the basket then the rotten fabric would probably tear apart. If he took the whining creature from the basket then it might well excrete liquid wastes all over him.

‘A curse on copulation,’ said Alfric.

Then he went to his horses, cut up one of the horse blankets, and brought back a piece the right size for baby-wrapping. He lifted the still-squalling thing from its basket. Its enfolding sheeting was damp, and smelt faintly of ammonia. Alfric shuddered, and quickly wrapped the creature in the blanket so only its face was exposed.

Then a voice roared:

‘You! This is your doom!’

Alfric turned, and saw the swamp giant Kralch standing far out in the mudmuck. A moment later, Kralch hurled a huge handful of mud in Alfric’s direction. Dodge? Duck? Alfric did not dare to do either, for the baby might have come to grief had he indulged in athletics.

Instead, Alfric turned his back to meet the mud, holding the baby close to his bosom.

Sklappersplat!

The mud burst around Alfric, nearly knocking him off his feet. The reek of it almost made him throw up. A fish kicked on the moonlit grass not half a dozen paces away, displaced from its home by the mudthrowing.

Alfric hastened into the cover of the trees.

The giant threw another handful of mud, but this time missed. Nevertheless, it screamed in triumph, slapped the swamp with its three-fingered hands and howled obscenities to the night air.

‘How childish,’ muttered Alfric.

When he got to his horses, he dumped the baby into one of the saddlebags, and was shortly on his way home.

Though he did not know it, his homeward journey was not to be uneventful.

CHAPTER TEN

Alfric was only halfway back to Galsh Ebrek when he met with a stranger.

The circumstances of their meeting were thus:

Alfric was riding along when he saw the surface of the path had been disturbed. Such disturbance would have been invisible to any ordinary human by night, at least in a place so dark and overhung by trees; but to Alfric it was very clear.

Presuming that it was possible that bandits might have hastily dug a pit in that place, Alfric swung down from the saddle and drew the silversword Sulamith’s Grief.

In open ground, Alfric might have stayed in the saddle. But here his options were limited. He could not spur his horse forward, because a suspected pit lay ahead. He could not retreat on horseback, either, because the pack animals behind him quite blocked the narrow path. Nor could he ride into the forest to either side, because the path ran between banks too steep for a horse to climb them; and, besides, the forest was low-
_{
branched and undergrowthed, which would have made riding either impossible or suicidal.