by Peter David
Something felt wrong.
There was no one thing that I could put my finger on. There weren’t any unusual sounds, no unexpected snapping of branches being trod upon in the darkness by an overloud opponent. And yet there was something undefined in the air, and I disliked it intensely.
The rest of the men in the barracks were sleeping soundly. I heard their peaceful snoring and envied them; for my part, I was never able to sleep so deeply. I had conditioned myself to come fully awake at the slightest hint of trouble, a technique that had saved my life on more than one occasion. In this particular case, it didn’t matter since slumber was eluding me in any event.
I rose from my bunk, unable to even essay sleep anymore, the sense that something was amiss continuing to gnaw at me. It was the work of moments to clothe myself fully and move out into the main square. Then I stood there, trying to discern just what it was that was causing my unnamed dread.
“You’re going to die tonight.”
The gnome had spoken practically at my elbow. I was inwardly startled but managed not to show it since I was loath to give him the satisfaction. “Why should tonight be different from any other night since that’s your regular prediction?”
He didn’t reply immediately, which was unusual for him. Typically, he delighted in making continued insulting comments and predictions of my imminent demise. I looked down at the gnome. He was simply staring straight ahead, as if he could see something that I couldn’t. “Because it is different,” he said, and there was something about his tone that I disliked intensely.
Then he looked up at me, and I saw something in his eyes that unsettled me to my core.
I saw pity.
He appeared to be sorry for me.
That was enough to send me hastening toward the parapets as though something spat up from the darkest depths was behind me, which, for all I knew, was the case.
Moments later, I was making my way along them, and I found Old Henry standing there, gazing warily into the darkness. “Henry,” I said briskly in a harsh whisper, “something is—”
“I know,” he said, apparently way ahead of me. “There’s something in the air, and I don’t know what.”
“You feel it, too?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. Even though I hear nothing, see nothing. There’s still a wrongness in the air.” His nostrils flared. “This may sound ridiculous, but sometimes you can smell the darkness. You know what I mean?”
“I think I do. There’s something unnatural . . .”
“Exactly,” he said. “We live in the heart of nature, and when something unnatural approaches, nature is pushed aside.” He considered the darkness a bit longer. We were nowhere near any lamps, crouched down, peering just above the top of the fence and providing no target that anything human could hit. “All right, Finn, listen carefully. Here’s what I want you to do . . .”
And suddenly an arrow was protruding from the side of Old Henry’s head.
There was one time in my youth when my brother, Quentin, had staggered into the house with thick red liquid seeping from his mouth and an arrow right through his head. My mother had let out a screech like unto the damned, then the rest of us fell down laughing as Quentin stood there with a demented grin and lifted the jesting device from his head. He had fashioned the jape from two halves of an arrow and some wire that he had bent around his skull to give the impression that his head had been skewered. Once she got her breath back, our mother had chased him halfway down the street, and when our father showed up in one of his rare sober evening appearances in our household, Mother angrily demanded justice be done. Our father grabbed Quentin firmly by the wrist and, with an amused twinkle in his eye, slapped Quentin on the wrist as lightly as he possibly could. Whereupon everyone started laughing all over again, and finally even my scowling mother allowed for a chuckle.
It was one of the only memories of my family I had that didn’t involve lawbreaking, drunkenness, or death.
Now I would never be able to look back upon it without feeling a chill because I was seeing it transpire in real life, upon a man who had—in the short time I’d known him—earned my respect.
Old Henry stood there for a moment, looking bewildered, obviously unable to process what had happened. I doubt he even knew. Then, of all things, reflexively he tried to go for his sword before toppling backwards off the parapet and landing heavily in the village square below. The sound of his body thudding to the ground immediately drew the attention of the guards, and there were gasps and cries of shock.
The awful sound snapped me from my paralysis, and I shouted, “We’re under attack! Watch your heads!” even as I dropped flat on my stomach. Two more arrows whizzed right over my head. Had I been standing, I would have wound up joining Old Henry, who was not going to be getting any older.
I was staggered at the marksmanship that was being displayed. There was no one within easy range of the wall, and we had the cover of darkness upon us. I could not understand how anyone could be targeting us with that amount of precision. Even I would have been hardpressed to make such shots, and I was one of the finest marksmen in the history of Albion if I do say so myself (and indeed have done so, frequently).
The head of the watch was clanging the alarm bell as loudly as he could. The guardsmen of Blackholm came pouring out of the barracks, some of them still fastening their trousers or slinging their weapons over their shoulders. There had been stray citizens wandering about, going from here to there or wherever their destinations were, but with the alarm being sounded, they scrambled to return to the imagined safety of their homes.
There were cries of horror and outrage as the body of Old Henry was spotted on the ground, arrow through its skull. I cursed myself as I remembered what I had told them about how the death of the oldest and most experienced leaders can have a palling effect on the men. My own words may well have doomed us, for Henry’s body might cause the same negative impact on our own people since I had put the idea in their heads.
Russell pushed through the men and stopped just short of tripping over his father’s corpse. He stood there for a moment, the warning bell still ringing, and all eyes were upon him. His face was pale, his eyes wide with shock. Then they narrowed as he straightened his back, raised his rifle over his head, and shouted, “For my father! Kill them all!”
This caused a rallying cry in response, and, as one, the men charged to their stations while others took up positions outside the gate, just in case there was some manner of barrier breach.
For some reason, I felt personally proud of Russell at that moment, as if he were my own son. Considering the unlikelihood of my marrying and settling down and producing children knowingly instead of by happenstance after the fact, that was probably about as close to paternal pride as I was going to get.
“Stay low!” I called out, as they got to their posts. “Stay low and wait for—!”
The walls suddenly shook. I heard something, a fast poketta-poketta sound, like the clicking claws of rodents running within the walls of a house.
I looked down and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The enemy had emerged from the darkness as if they’d been wearing it as cloaks and they were scaling the walls. They weren’t using ladders or any manner of hook device.
They were climbing. Up. The walls.
And they weren’t human. Or at least perhaps they had been, but they no longer were.
In my time I had faced just about every creature that Albion had to throw at me, yet I had never seen anything like this. Truth to tell, I had no idea what in the world I was looking at.
They weren’t balverines, that much I knew immediately. For one thing, they were wearing clothing: slacks, albeit frayed at the cuffs, and tunics that hung loosely around their torsos. But their arms and considerable expanses of their chests were visible, and they didn’t have coats of fur but sporadic patches of it, like a lawn that had burned spots because it wasn’t evenly watered. Their skin was a sickly gray, certa
inly not a color that any living creature should be sporting. Nor were their faces wolfen in aspect; neither were they wholly human. Their features were distended, savage, their lips drawn back into fearsome aspects, and fangs were visible.
Most daunting were their claws, for it was those that they were using to scale the wooden walls. They were scrambling up the sides by sinking their claws into the walls themselves. That had been the source of the noise I had heard.
They were skittering so rapidly up the walls that we scarcely had time to react. I aimed my rifle at the nearest one and fired. The damned creature darted to the right, evading my shot, and kept coming. I shot again, nearly point-blank, and still it managed to elude me.
The nearest creature reached the top and I swung my rifle around, clubbing it on the side of the head with the rifle stock. The creature let out a yelp, jolted loose from its hold on the wall. It tumbled backwards, colliding with one of its peers on the way down, and both of them fell to the ground. But there were half a dozen more where they came from coming up right behind them.
At the same moment I heard a repeated slamming from the main gate. I risked a quick glance and saw the crossbars that held it in place already beginning to bend and splinter from the impact. Men were shoving their bodies against it in order to try and add more resistance, but I realized quickly that it was hopeless. These creatures, whatever they were, were obviously strong in addition to being fast and deadly.
I doubted that it was a random assault by a brand-new manner of monstrosity. The things had to be serving at the pleasure of the warlord, Droogan. I never would have thought it possible to send supernatural creatures against Blackholm since such creatures are almost impossible to control. Perhaps the most potent of magic users during the long-past era of Heroes might have been able to accomplish it, but what would be the point? Someone capable of that level of magic would certainly have more important things to do than assail a town just to expand his own territory.
We are doomed, I thought. These were not slow, shambling menaces that could be picked off from safety. They were coming at us fast and furious, and we simply did not have either the manpower or firepower to withstand them.
This realization did not mean that I would go quietly into the night. “Fall back!” I shouted, but I doubted anyone heard me, for the air was filled with the deafening roars of the oncoming creatures. One of them leaped over the top of the wall and came at me, claws upraised, mouth wide open and snarling. Perhaps it expected me to run before its charge. It erred in judgment. Instead, I lunged right at it, driving my rifle forward like a spear and ramming it directly into its wide-open mouth. Then I pulled the trigger and blew out the back of its skull. I had the distinct pleasure of watching its life exit its eyes, as I muttered, “Dodge that, you son of a bitch.”
But there were more right behind it.
I backed up as quickly as I could, keeping my rifle leveled. Another of the creatures leaped in where the previous one had fallen. It glanced down at its fallen comrade, looked to me, and obviously determined that I was more of a threat than just a casual and frightened soldier.
The stairway down was right behind me. I ducked down it but knew that the creature would follow me within seconds and would have the high ground during that time. So instead I scurried down only halfway, brought my rifle up, and waited. Sure enough, its ugly face appeared in the open square right above me and I fired before it could pull away. I nailed the bastard right through the eye.
I leaped the rest of the way down the stairs, and, just as my feet hit the ground, I heard a horrific cracking from across the way. The crossbar had splintered and shattered under the assault, and the gate had burst open. The monsters were overrunning Blackholm.
The soldiers were fighting madly, but I saw the nature and number of our assailants, and I knew with crushing certainty that this fight was lost. So there were only two options left open to me. Either I could focus on my own survival, or I could focus on making a good accounting of myself and taking as many of the bastards with me before sheer weight of numbers took me down.
I cast a glance at Old Henry’s corpse lying splayed a short distance away, and that made the decision an easy one.
The creatures were moving en masse through the main square. There were so many of them that dodging was no longer an issue. I aimed my rifle and started firing into the mass. Firing off the shots in quick succession, I then started moving as the creatures began falling and the others began looking for the origin point of the shots. Having emptied Vanessa, I slung the rifle and pulled out my pistol. I clung to the shadows of the walls and fired from hiding. More of the creatures went down, their heads exploding as each shell found its mark.
I still had one bullet left in the pistol when there was suddenly a low growl directly in my path.
Without even bothering to take aim, I whipped the gun around and fired blindly. There was an irritated yelp and I saw blood spurting from the head of the creature that was in front of me. Unfortunately, all I had managed to accomplish was nicking its ear. The rest of it was intact and deadly.
That one was bigger than the others, more powerfullooking. Based purely on its size, I would have guessed that it was one of the leaders. At the least, an alpha male of sorts.
It came toward me, ready to rake me with its deadly claws. Reversing the pistol and using it as a club wasn’t going to do me any good.
Understand that I have no hesitation about using a blade. I am an adroit enough swordsman, but my skill with it is only middling. Let’s just say that there are far more people around who are better than I with the sword than there are my superiors with firearms.
But aside from a few of the creatures who were apparently bowmen—a distressing thought at that—these creatures weren’t carrying armament beyond what their own bodies possessed, so swordsmansip wasn’t going to be technique. It was hack and slash and try to buy a few more moments of life so that I could continue to do damage.
I yanked my cutlass clear of my scabbard and readied it.
The creature came straight at me, and I backed up, swinging the sword in an arc to keep it at bay. It tried to reach for me, and I beat it back. It yanked its hands away lest I hack them off at the wrists, then it snarled viciously. We maneuvered around each other, matching each other’s steps. This just further underscored for me that I was facing something other than the typical sorts of mindless, ravenous creatures that populated Albion. A balverine or a hobbe would have just come right at me, uncaring of my defenses. My assailant was thinking, strategizing, analyzing what I was doing and coming up with countermeasures.
Others of its kind were coming toward us, clearly intending to overwhelm me through sheer force of numbers. But the creature I was facing waved them off. It wanted me for itself. Astounding. In addition to everything else, the monsters had pride. Its action further convinced me that this particular beast was a leader.
Time was not on my side. If I was going to have any hope of survival, I had to dispense with the thing, and simply allowing it to take its own sweet time studying my techniques wasn’t going to accomplish that. I let out a defiant yell that, in my imagination, froze it momentarily, and came straight at it, whipping the sword around viciously, tossing aside all hopes of defense in exchange for a valiant offense. “Die, beast, at the hands of Ben Finn, defender of Blackholm!”
I don’t know why I shouted my name just then. It just seemed to add a certain panache to the moment. I’m not sure what I intended to accomplish with it.
To my astonishment it caused the creature to stop dead, fastening its yellow eyes upon me as if seeing me for the first time.
Not questioning my good fortune, I lunged, not going for anything elegant but simply hoping to open up a vein in its throat and cause it to bleed out. A slash attack is a far more difficult thing for an unarmed opponent to avoid.
Yet avoid it the creature did, ducking under it and coming in quickly, slamming me up against the wall with such a fierce impact
that the sword dropped from my fingers. I had absolutely no defense against it. Its foul breath washed over me, and I had never been as close to death as I was at that moment.
I braced myself, waiting for the final blow to come.
Instead, much to my confusion, the creature grabbed at my right hand. It kept me pressed against the wall with its shoulder and held me firmly by the wrist. I had no idea what in the world it was doing. Was it planning to rip my arm off? Eat my hand? What was happening?
Then it passed one of its clawed fingers over the surface of my signet ring.
“What in the—?” I managed to say even as I realized that its grip on me was slackening. Seizing the opportunity, I yanked clear of its grasp upon me. Free of it, I grabbed my fallen sword and brought it up in a defensive position.
To my utter astonishment, the creature brought up its hands, warding me off, as if it was suddenly afraid of my attack or simply reluctant to engage.
Then I saw something I hadn’t before, something on its hand.
It was a signet ring identical to mine.
Never in my life would I have considered, even for a moment, engaging a beast of Albion in conversation. Generally speaking, there wasn’t typically all that much to talk about. It tries to kill you, you try to kill it, and that’s pretty much the extent of the social intercourse.
Yet I found myself actually speaking to the creature and expecting an answer. “Where did you get that?” I demanded. “Whose grave did you rob? Everyone who wore that ring, save for me, is dead.”
And the creature spoke.
It said one word, one name, and it seemed a tremendous effort for the word to emerge: “Benny?”
No one in the entirety of my life had ever called me by that diminutive nickname. No one . . . save a single individual. It had irritated the piss out of me, and I had always scowled and complained when he’d done so. Naturally that was all that was required for him to make it a habit.
Because that’s how brothers are. They say and do things purely for the joy of annoying the other. None of my other brothers had ever used the name. One or two of them had tried and had promptly been beaten down by the brother who first used it. It was his own, personal means of getting under my skin in that fraternal way that brothers have, and he wasn’t about to let anyone else in on the fun.