I ran to him, drove my blade into his gut. As he opened his mouth to scream, I took his face in my massive hand and drove him into the wall. The stone cracked as his head smashed into it, his helmet crumpling like tin. I let him fall to the ground, his eyes rolling back into oblivion.
I panted, feeling the pain of the bolt in my flesh. Clenching it tight, I yanked it out and stared at my blood on it. Whatever Fenris had done to me, I could still bleed. I tossed the bolt away with a curse.
It would only be a matter of time now before every guard in the complex was after me. Bellabel, hold on, I’m almost there. I sprinted down the hall, then made a left turn, one I had made a thousand times, the one toward my chamber. I saw the guard that had stood at my door for years now, even came to know his name, Cubio. There was no friendship between us, only a curt respect. His eyes widened as he saw me coming, and he snatched his spear in both hands.
“I wish you no ill…. Cubio,” I said, my footsteps unwavering. “But you can either forsake your duty as a guard, or die this night.”
He held his spear in a defensive stance. “You…. what demon has granted you life again?”
“Last warning.”
“Whatever necromantic power you are under, Dog of War, it has made you a thing of evil…” His voice trembled even more than his hand. “And by the gods I cannot let you live.”
I shook my head. “You damn fool.” My hand was a serpent as it snatched the spear shaft, wrenched it aside. My sword arm did the rest as it drove my blade into the damn fool’s heart. It comforted me some, to know he was a pious man. I hoped that the gods would recognize this in the afterlife.
I took the keys from his dead body and opened my chamber door. “Bellabel!” I called to her as I stepped inside. “Bellabel!” She was nowhere to be found. “Damn it all!” I hissed, my fist banging against the door. Where? Where was she? I paced my chamber trying to think. Memories rushed to me. The trophies on the walls, the maps, the weapons. Wars, contests, battles… she was the one thing that was not touched by blood and death... and I had lost her. I felt myself shaking as footsteps began clattering toward my door. They swarmed in, the guards. These were in heavy plate, large dual handed swords, axes and maces readied for me. There were six of them, their plate enameled in green and gold, Pelleo’s house colors.
Never a rest from blood, from death. “You are all…” I muttered as I felt my jaw contorting, fur pushing through my pores, “pissing me the hell offrrrrrgh!” I could not finish the words as I became a beast once more. I held enough of my human mind to grip my sword and begin flailing in a berserk rage. They were not elegant strikes, but they held such speed and power that the first armored bastard I reached, I sent reeling back with the impact of my blow. Though his heavy plate armor absorbed the blow, I could see the metal dented, and his arm quivering as if I had snapped it. I drove the blade up and into his armpit. Blood gushed. I whirled just as another was slashing at me with a greatsword. Despite my leap back, he cut into me at the abdomen.
“Graaagh!” I grunted in pain, then stepped forward and swung. There was a loud crack as I struck him on the shoulder. He fell to one knee in pain, armor dented and his shoulder popped from its socket. He still had enough wits to thrust his blade at me. I twisted aside and drove the claws of my free hand into his helm. They pierced enough into the metal that I gripped his head like a vice, and smashed him headfirst into the ground.
I felt a body moving toward me and jumped out of the way as a warhammer came crashing down. My savage mind only saw something useful in the weapon, so I drove my sword into the gut of an oncoming guard, tearing right into a weak point in the steel armor, and left the sword lodged in him as he fell. I ran to the wielder of the warhammer and snatched the weapon by the haft. I went to wrench it from him, but he had a strong grip, so I thrashed him about, slamming him back and forth like a rag doll into the ground and wall until he let go. In the thrashing he lost consciousness and lay there with flecks of rubble around him.
As I gripped the warhammer, I looked to the other two, who were now slowly backing away, their weapons held in trembling alertness. I was panting, and a strange smell wafted to me. It was the smell of fear. It was a beautiful aroma that aroused me. The room became a blur of the warhammer’s steel echoing in the room like thunder as it pounded into armor, crushing it, denting it so deep that it was their own armor that snapped their bones and sinews. The room was littered with mangled bodies and bloodsoaked metal.
As I stood at the doorway, I caught sight of my silhouette cast by the torchlight. It was manlike, but my shoulders and arms were even thicker with muscle now, and my head had pointed ears and a muzzle. My long hair had receded into the fur that covered my entire body. My legs were still those of a man’s, but furred, and felt so powerful that I would have wagered I could leap into the sky. Gods, this was strange. Perhaps I truly was some demon now. It did not matter—I still had to find Bellabel. And if harm had come to her, whatever Pelleo thought he had gained by betraying me, he was going to lose a thousandfold.
I thought of her then, an urgency making me growl and nearly bark in frustration. Calm yourself, you fool. Perhaps, if my human side could not find Bellabel, perhaps my beast could. I breathed in deep. Scents flooded me. Too many. I thought of Bellabel, thought of her moist skin, of her sweet tongue, the flowery musk of her hair. I inhaled again, and my head turned, ever so slightly. By instinct, I felt compelled to roam down the stone hall. I walked, keeping my concentration on the scent. I was unsure of what I was doing but my choices were running out.
As I kept making my way down hallways and up stairs, I recognized where I was going. I should have known that’s where she would be taken. The bastard. The fucking bastard. My throat clenched. My jaws snapped so hard they would have crushed a steel beam.
I barreled on, no longer caring about my footfalls alerting more guards, no longer caring about anything save disemboweling him. I saw a silhouette up ahead, then as I turned the corner saw a guard run for his life. I chased him down and ripped into his throat with my clawed grip. As I stood, I saw I was at a door with a rooster symbol hanging above it. I breathed in. Yes, she was here. I stepped to the door, and leaned in, alert for a trap of some kind.
“When you’re done, I better get a turn. I’m not here just to watch,” I heard a voice say.
“Will you shut your mouth now? You’re ruining it!” the Cock answered.
The warhammer became a battering ram in my hands as I drove it into the door. Wood splintered, metal hinges squealed under the blows. I slammed into the door with my shoulder, and it flew.
The Cock was there holding Bellabel’s hands down. Bellabel grunted, screamed, her breasts exposed, wearing only her skirt as she struggled in his grip. The other gladiator was a tall thin Gongolian, skin black as pitch, bald headed and draped in leopard furs and ringed mail. He was barely drawing a scythe sword when my hammer smashed into his skull—pieces of bone and brain were carried into the air by a burst of blood. I flung my hammer away as I pounced on the Cock, his helmet off, red hair flowing over his mailed shirt. He was drawing a dagger when I snatched his wrist in my grip. Bellabel recoiled, pulling up against a corner of the room, wild with panic. A scream wanted to escape the red-headed bastard, but as my beast eyes locked on his, the sheer terror froze him. His yellowed teeth rattled as the dagger fell from his crushed hand. “Gaaa...ahhh…” he gasped in pain. Holding him by the wrist, I plucked the dagger from the ground. A cry shuddered through his face as I drove it into his crotch, then twisted. “Yourrr... can’t callrrr yourself the Cock anymorrre, can you?” A few gargled cries escaped his throat before I mercifully crushed it in my grip.
Bellabel leapt out from the bed. She made to dash for the door, but I snatched her by the arm. She recoiled in panic, screaming.
“Bellabrrerr!” I muttered as best I could through my fanged mouth and enormous tongue. She screamed again and flailed in my grip.
“Please!” she protested, “please, do
n’t hurt me!”
“I won’t,” I snarled. “I’m… rrrr... I’m Rothan.”
“No, he’s dead… he...”
“I am Rothan. I am...rrr... taking you to the cold place… I am taking you to Skald. Where we value warm things.” Recalling the words I had spoken to her summoned more of my human mind and I felt my muzzle receding, the smoothness of human flesh returning to my form.
“Rothan…” She looked at me in disbelief. “How are you here? What magic is this…” She still shook with fear.
“A god has touched me. Fenris. The god of the North.”
She looked me up and down as if making sure I was real, and nodded. “I have heard of gods doing such things. Of course, one would choose you.”
She left my embrace, picked up her red garment to cover her breasts. Suddenly a wave of dizziness washed over me. I felt my legs give out under me, and I collapsed to my hands and knees.
“Rothan!”
“What is this… My body feels weak. My head swimming… feels like a drunkenness from hell. Perhaps my wounds are finally too much…”
“Rothan…. What wounds?”
I looked up at her with confusion, then looked down at my body. The wounds from the arena had healed true enough, but I had sustained more making my way here, sword slashes all over, a crossbow bolt to the shoulder. I felt for them now, and saw that they were gone. In their place were faint scars, as if those wounds had been dealt to me years ago, rather than in the past hour. She helped me stumble up, and I collapsed into the bed.
“What happened?” I asked her through my quickened breathing.
“The arena was in chaos as the monster killed you. Your friends tried to help you. I did not see what happened. Guards came and took me away. They took me to the pleasure chamber. They held me there until… he came for me.”
A river of rage began coursing through my veins. At least I had saved her from the worst of it. But I knew that time was slipping away. It would only be a matter of moments and more guards would come for us.
“You can still emerge from this with your life Bellabel. There’s no need for you to die. You would not be free, but in time you might. At least it would be a life. In this condition, I will not last long against the horde of guards crawling all over. With every moment, they get closer.”
“No, I will not leave you. Not ever. We must see this through to the end now.” She placed her hands on my chest. They felt hot, fevered. “I will help you. I will fight if I must.”
“Bellabel, they’re trained soldiers, armored.”
“What is armor? What are steel weapons to the powers of the divines? Don’t you see? The gods are with you. And I am with you, so why should they not be with me?”
As I lay there I actually laughed. “I have come face to face with a god this very day, yet you are still more of a believer than I.”
“Here,” she said, and picked up a flask of wine from a side table. “Drink. God-touched or not, you must thirst.” Just feeling a flask of wine in my hand was comforting somehow, and I took a long draught, nearly finishing it in one swig.
“Come then,” I said, the tang of wine still filling my mouth, “we have little time. We must flee.”
I took the hammer in hand, and slipped on a sword belt hanging on the wall. I signaled to her to come as I stood at the doorway, peering one way then another. In this human form I was more controlled, thought more clearly, yet I still felt some of the dizziness from earlier. We began making our descent, down a curving staircase. “Here,” she whispered to me as we made our way down a stone hallway, “make that left and go up the stairs.”
“We are trying to reach the ground, Bellabel.”
“Yes, but if there are guards waiting for us, they will think us to take the quickest route down. Taking this path we will emerge not at the main east gate but by the side gate, near the stables. It is not far to the outer wall from there.
We turned and went up the stairs as she counseled. As I saw a long hallway was clear, I grabbed her hand and we ran straight across. I paused at the edge, the stairs scrolling down to the ground level. Just those stairs stood between us and the main courtyard, where we could make a run for it.
Just then the jangling of armor and weapons sounded, along with the thrum of running feet.
Damn it. They must have guessed we would come this way. I motioned with my arm, sweeping Bellabel behind me, clenching my hammer in readiness.
“Fire! Fire!” I heard men cry. I raised my warhammer, but then heard the jangling pass the bottom of the stairs and continue running on until it faded into the noise of the crowd. They had run past the stair entrance. What madness was this?
I crept down the stairs, Bellabel close behind. As I moved closer and closer to the ground level, noises and smells swirled together in a hurricane of sensations. Horses braying, burning wood, fear pulsing in blood, cooked food, wine everywhere, the smell of burning everywhere—it was madness.
I could make out the swirl of shouts now: “Fire! Akaraxis smites us!—mercy!—out of the way!—fire!—let me pass!—let go!—fire!—my child!—damn you!—fire!”
As I peered out from the stairwell, I saw the madness that had overtaken the crowd. Fire blazed on the rooftops of the shops in the courtyard. People only made the crisis worse as they ran here and there in panic. Men punched each other, street urchins stole coin, men snatched flailing women onto their shoulders like bales of wheat, horses reared. The stables were catching fire too. “Come, this is our chance,” I whispered to Bellabel. I took her by the hand, and we hurried into the courtyard.
I shoved bodies aside or slid between them. “I still have melons for sale!” a scrawny, turbaned merchant shouted into the chaos, standing on a crate. I kept on moving, not letting go of Bellabel’s hand.
“Hey!” a barely standing drunken oaf nearly wretched at me “Where you going with the pretty wench?” I backhanded him out of my way and pressed on. We made our way through the madness of the crowd until I spotted the Emperor Gate, the main gate out of the entire complex. It was more than a hundred feet tall, and wide enough that on certain celebrations parades of legions and elephantirs could march through. We moved closer to it still, along with a surge of the crowd that was now seeking to run from the spreading fire. As we moved ever closer, I spotted the gleam of fire on helms. Guards. There were at least a dozen gathering at the gate. I did my best to stay calm, no suspicious movements.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw glittering helms moving through the crowd behind us as if they were moving through a field of corn. They were closing in on us from behind. I pressed on, but felt for my hammer now.
“Halt!” I heard a voice shout, and ten guards with halberds all readied their weapons, blocking off the gate. Behind me the screaming crowd parted as they were shoved aside by guards moving toward us. I felt for something inside me, that beast who was becoming something of a friend, or a shadow—whether it was myself or something else entirely, I knew not. I need you now, beast… I pulled Bellabel closer to me, and called on the beast. Come. Come now. I felt fangs growing in my mouth, felt my muscles swell with fury. Fur burst forth and I charged straight ahead.
I ducked below the first’s halberd, the weapon nicking at my ear. My shoulders twisted as I buried my hammer into this hip, shattering it entirely and hurling him in a death scream. A heavily armored green guard swung his great ax. I went to parry with the hammer’s haft, but it was not metal ringed, and so the wooden haft split under the force of the blow. It slowed the armored guard’s blow enough that the ax did not split my chest open, but it still left a red gash in my furred flesh. “Graaagh!” The hammer slipped from my hands. My claws cleaved into his armor, but did not pierce all the way. Still my raking blows sent him reeling back and before long my claws gripped under his helm and I drove him face first into the stony ground. I heard his skull crack as another halberd swiped at me. Ducking back, I snatched the dead guard’s greatsword from the ground and returned my own blow. It
found the halberdier’s thigh and cleaved it open, then another furious swipe and his head flew off.
“Bellabel!” I called for her to come closer. I parried another halberd, then drove the blade into the wielder’s gut.
“Rothan!” I heard Bellabel behind me. “Crossbows!”
I glanced back to see that crossbowmen were closing in from behind. “Raawwrgh!” I raged on to the gate, with just five halberdiers between us and freedom. Moments blurred together into a frenzy of steel on steel, claws ripping into flesh, steel searing gainst my furred skin. Three bloody corpses dropped and the other two ran off.
I grabbed Bellabel by the hand and made for the wide open gate.
As I stepped into it I caught sight of a strange man in a high collared orange robe on the other side. He was bald with a neatly trimmed beard, and he held his hand out in a strange gesture. A wizard of some kind. I did not have time for his magic prattle. I stepped into the gate—fire sprang up all around me. Pain seared up my leg as I fell to the ground. “Rothan!” I heard Bellabel as she came to me. I pried my eyes open and saw the great wall of flame that had engulfed the interior of the gate. The flames licked at the top of the archway, some hundred feet above us.
Wolf Blade: A Sword and Sorcery Fantasy Harem Page 7