Beast (A Prydain novel Book 1)

by AJ Adams

  Watching Lizbeth choke made me furious. “Bite him!” I yelled.

  They can’t have heard me, there was too much noise from the camp, but the Beast finished. The second he was done, she threw up. The Beast laughed and pulled her up by the hair.

  “Coward!” I screamed.

  There was a hand on my shoulder. Rune.

  “Stop him,” I begged. “Stop them hurting those girls!”

  His eyes were ice. “They burned our ship.”

  “They didn’t! The men did that!”

  He shrugged. “They benefit from the things their fathers, brothers and families do. Now they share the suffering.”

  I didn’t have a comeback for that. Two seconds later Rune was switching the shackles to my feet and pushing a bowl of stew into my hands.

  “I’m watching you,” he growled, and then he was off, first splashing about in the river and then bossing Beasts around. He kept an eye on me the entire time, so there was no way I could get a stone and destroy his last pair of shackles.

  The Beasts had shoved the girls back in the centre of camp, and they weren’t given breakfast. It made me feel a bit guilty but not enough to quit scoffing down mine. I did spot Mina, but when I lifted the bowl and waved her over to share, she took it the wrong way, thinking I was crowing. She spat something, and then all the Citizens were glaring.

  Back at the Vale, after being falsely accused, I learned not to bother trying to convince anyone to change their mind about me. So this time, I just turned my back and ate. Then the river beckoned.

  I got to my feet and bunny hopped to the water. Rune was instantly looking my way, like a dog pointing at prey, so I waved the bowl, and yelled, “I’m escaping!”

  Several Beasts laughed and jeered, but they left me alone, so for the first time in days, I got to settle in among the bushes and go potty alone. Amazingly, I was okay. Well, covered in bruises from being bounced around the cart, and from fighting, and the fucking, but what I meant was that I thought going to the loo might hurt, but it didn’t. Hooray for goose grease, right?

  When I got out of the bushes, I washed in the river. My gear was ripped all over, little better than nothing in terms of cover, but at least I came out clean. I also washed the bowl and the spoon, hoping that sucking up would help melt Rune’s stony heart, work a miracle and make him take off the shackles.

  The Beasts were off to a slow start. They redistributed their food into various carts, and then piled the girls into separate ones. I guessed they didn’t want to give us a chance to eat our weight in greens and fruit.

  Afterwards, they hung about, talking, and I had the impression they were having a meeting—a Conclave, as they’d called it. They weren’t voting, and there were knots of them wandering off, picking a Citizen out of a cart, and having a quick fuck, but I was watching closely, and it looked like something was going on. Also, Rune was at the bottom of it. He was talking here, talking there, spreading the word about something.

  I heard snatches, “wergelt won’t make us a ship” and “the ice is permanent”, then “we need a sail” and “war is expensive”.

  They might have been calculating wergelt, or figuring out what they needed, but it seemed more complex than that. Rune looked like he was challenging something, proposing an idea that riled the others and trying to talk them round. Whatever it was, the Beasts were a bit edgy when they finished.

  While they were harnessing the horses, Rune checked the Citizens, going from cart to cart with Siv, obviously stocktaking. When they got to the cart I’d been in that first day, they pulled out Tawny. She didn’t look so hot. They poked at her a bit and pushed her back in.

  Rune came over soon after. “If you keep abusing those girls, you’ll get no wergelt,” I told him. God knows why I bothered, because the Citizens wouldn’t lift a finger to help me, but I did. Terminal stupidity, probably. “They’re no use if they’re dead.”

  Of course, he paid no attention. He picked up his bedroll, then me, and carried me to the carts. I got shoved into the one with Tawny. Rune then pushed a skirt into my hands.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer but as soon as the doors shut, I got a raft of shit from the Citizens.

  “That was Petronilla’s!” A dark-eyed girl was screaming at me.

  “Oh.” I was looking at the skirt, knowing where it had come from, but I still asked. “Where is she?”

  “She’s dead!”

  “I’m sorry.” What can you say, right? “Erm, what happened to her?”

  I was worrying, thinking about meat.

  “They just covered her with stones; she didn’t even have a burial!”

  “Well, it could be worse.” I didn’t mean it that way, but I didn’t have a chance to explain myself.

  “You bitch!” The catty girl was bouncing up, her eyes snapping. “Slut!”

  “You tell her, Hildegard!” Mina was in the group, all uptight and virtuous. “She doesn’t care about poor Petronilla!”

  “I didn’t know!” I told them. “And I didn’t ask for the skirt!”

  “Traitor!” Mina spat.

  “I’m in the same position as you!” I protested.

  “He feeds you!”

  “Why aren’t you passed over?”

  “You had an APPLE!”

  “Whore!”

  “How the hell is all that my fault?” I yelled.

  “You make up to that Beast!” Hildegard shouted. “We all heard you wailing like a bitch on heat!”

  Okay, so they got me on that one. “I was softening him up so I could get away.” It sounded so lame, even I didn’t believe me. At least I had my hands free. If it came to a fight, I could belt them back.

  But the Citizens weren’t fighters. They sat there and called me names, but that was it. Me, I ignored them. I put on the skirt, mentally asking the lost Petronilla for forgiveness. If there’d been an alternative, I wouldn’t have, but it seemed crazy to go around semi-naked when I didn’t have to.

  I checked Tawny, ignoring the girls bitching at me not to touch her. She was badly bruised and there was some bleeding, but it was the fever that worried me. She was asleep or unconscious, so I made sure there was a sack keeping her from bouncing into the cart doors.

  “Is there any water?” I asked the girls.

  There wasn’t.

  “When we stop, she needs water.”

  “Don’t pretend you care!” Mina spat.

  Fed up with them, I decided to tend to myself again. I tied the tatters of my tunic together and arranged it so it fitted snugly. Covered up again, I went back to looking out between the slats. The Beasts were walking alongside the carts, with a patrol out in front and behind. I could see Rune, but Siv had disappeared. As we trundled along, the girls were talking.

  “Dora is still hurting awfully badly.”

  “So’s Rose, and Grace.”

  “Alma says Brant’s nice. He gave her supper, and an apple.”

  And Alma didn’t get called a slut, either, I noted.

  “Siv is rough.”

  “Which one is he?”

  And then they were talking about the Beasts, trying to put names to them all, and cataloguing who was injured and how badly. Petronilla had died, but she’d been the only one that night, thankfully.

  “I didn’t get passed over,” Mina sighed.

  “Me neither,” Hildegard said.

  “I heard them talking,” another said. “They think we might die, so they’re limiting pass-overs.”

  “Oh thank Ullr the Glorious One,” Mina shuddered. “I thought I was going to die!”

  “I hate it when they make you suck them,” another said.

  Mina dropped her voice, “I heard that Tawny had two Beasts do her at the same time.”

  That got them all talking about who’d suffered most, but through it all, not one of them suggested running or fighting.

  “I thought they’d be here for us by now,” a little black-haired girl
was fretting. “I thought we’d be freed at King’s Cross.”

  “They’ll come for us at Haven,” Mina was confident. “They’ll need time to put out the fires and raise the wergelt.”

  “How far is that?” Hildegard asked.

  “A month.”

  At that there was an appalled silence. I thought they might now want to make a break for it, but no.

  “We’ll survive,” Mina encouraged them.

  “I wonder how much they’ll have to pay,” Hildegard said.

  “It won’t be much,” one of them whispered. “Beasts don’t understand money.”

  “Right, they’re just wild savages,” that was Mina.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. They’d observed the Beasts as closely as I had, but apparently they’d kept their ears and eyes shut.

  “I want to go home!”

  Whoever that was started them all weeping. Then they had a singsong to cheer themselves up. Yes, “I Will Serve In Ullr’s Glorious Hall” again.

  I really didn’t get them. Ullr’s hall is where warriors, meaning men, get to eat and drink all day while women run around and serve them. What kind of afterlife is that? The Citizens seemed crazy to me, as nutty as the people of the Vale. See, I really am bad. Ullr’s never letting me into his hall. I’m going to end up in Svartalfheim where the dark ones live. But actually, I’d rather be there than be a drudge all my life, this one or the next. Also, I was determined that in this life I wasn’t going to be a Beast’s property or meal.

  We were moving north at quite a rapid rate, with the Beasts walking fast and breaking into a trot whenever there was a flat bit of road. Well, road is a bit generous as descriptions go. The potholed path outside King’s Cross had vanished, leaving just rough ground, yet the Beasts seemed to know where they were going, no hesitation at all. I couldn’t figure it out, but I was grateful that I was in a cart. Being carried along was infinitely better than marching.

  We soon left the open fields and began moving through forest. At first it looked really pretty. I’d not seen proper forest before, because Caern is a mountain fortress, all rock with an occasional shrub, and the Vale is all farmland, so it was interesting. The sun filtered through the trees, making pretty patterns, and there were loads of birds, all singing.

  But as we went on, the trees became bigger and the forest denser. The sun was still visible, but it was cold because we got no heat. The girls fell quiet, sitting wordlessly in a huddle. Suddenly the birds didn’t seem to be singing, either.

  I had the creeps, and the Beasts felt it, because they quietly spread out, marching three steps away from each other and keeping silent. I saw them fingering their knives, too; although most just put a hand on their weapons, a few drew them.

  I had the strangest feeling that the world was holding its breath. Something was going to happen.

  “I’m scared!” Mina wailed suddenly.

  “Shut up!” I hissed.

  Mina went scarlet with anger. “Who are you to tell me—”

  There was a bloodcurdling scream, and then shapes rained down on us from the trees. At first I thought they were bears. They had big yellow teeth, wild-looking fur, and they growled like animals. They fell on the Beasts, howling as they hurled through the air.

  I saw Rune, a knife in each hand, jump into the fray, wielding the blades in a wicked whirl in front of him. Two bears went down, and that’s when I saw their faces. These weren’t animals, they were men wearing bearskins. But as I watched, they seemed eerily unworldly. They fought, bled and died, but they were aimless in their violence.

  I saw two leap on a Beast, snarling as they savaged his arms, and just as I thought he was dead, they were off attacking someone else.

  There was blood everywhere. The Beasts were shouting, the wild men snarled, and the girls were screaming. I thought I’d go mad with the noise.

  “Let me out!” It was Mina, clawing at the doors. “Help!”

  I was trying to calm her. “You idiot,” okay, not tactful but I was scared, too, “you’re safe in here! Out there, you’re dead!”

  Tawny was moving, too, her eyes blurred but aware. “What?” she moaned. “Are they killing us?”

  I put a hand on her arm. “It’s okay, you’re safe in here.”

  But Mina’s screaming had attracted attention. The cart began rocking as bears were jumping about on the roof. I could hear the horse whinnying in fear.

  The girls went mad.

  “We’re going to die!”

  “Help us! Ullr, help us!”

  “I want to go home!”

  The horse stopped screaming, which was ominous, and then bears were ripping at the slats. If they got in, we’d be dead, so I was scrambling about, looking for something to bash them with. The Citizens were useless. They squealed and wailed, huddling against each other.

  I heard a loud bang. Gunfire. For a moment, the bears on the roof stopped. Peering out, I saw Rune loading a musket and shooting a bear. He’d kept one back, and he knew how to use it. As he loaded it, I could see he wasn’t expert but he was fast. He got another bear and another, and was reloading again when a bear jumped in, banging the musket with a rock. The gun jammed.

  I saw Rune go down under the bear, and then the ones on the roof were right back at work, breaking through. They dropped a slat on me, so I picked it up and began bashing at them, hoping that trashing their hands would frighten them off.

  It didn’t. A face was looking down at me, mad glaring eyes under a skull with yellow fangs.

  I almost peed myself with fear. “Fight, you useless idiots!” I yelled at the Citizens. But they were paralysed by terror, so it was just me, bashing away as claws reached down at me.

  In absolute fear I shoved the slat up through the gap, and into a bear’s chin. It dislodged him, but as he tumbled down, the cart rocked, twisted and turned. The doors burst open, and I got tossed out.

  I rolled swiftly, my feet bound by the shackles, but even the rapid exit didn’t save me. A bear jumped me, foul breath in my face, stinking fur all over me.

  I tried to knee him and was stymied by the shackles. He had a sharpened fang in his hand, and he was ripping at my tunic with it, tearing the knotted ragged tatters. I grabbed his wrist and bit. At the same time, he punched me in the gut. The pain was excruciating, but it gave me the impetus to bite down. I could feel blood running down my chin and down my arm.

  He ripped away his wrist from my mouth but also lost his hold on my shoulder. I tried to knee him, and when the shackles got in the way again, I tried to toss him off by arching my back. The bear’s feet tangled in the shackles, and then we battled each other, biting and punching, but I couldn’t use my legs, and he was too strong. He got an arm across my neck, raised the fang, and then it was rushing down at my face. I bucked and screamed as it came smashing down.

  It missed me by a hair. I felt the rush of it past my cheek. He raised it again, and I head-butted him. It didn’t stop him: the fang was coming down again, and this time it was aimed at my heart. There was no way I could dodge.

  There was a bright flash and a spray of blood. I thought it was mine, that I was dead, on my way to Svartalfheim, but then the bear was screaming, clutching at his severed arm as his hand, still holding the fang, landed in the grass.

  A large hand appeared, familiar snakes writhing. Another flash, and then the bear’s head vanished in another fountain of gore.

  I was screaming, soaked in blood, and totally hysterical. The bear’s body was plucked away and there was Rune, two knives in his hands, looking as feral as the bears.

  “Wynne, okay, quiet now.” He was dropping to his knees, putting down his knives. “They’re gone. It’s over.”

  I bashed him. “I couldn’t fight! Because of you!”

  “Hush now, Ylva.”

  He smelled hot and musky, familiar muscles wrapped around me. “You chained me! I almost died!”

  He just patted me. “We have to move on.”

  The second he picke
d me up and put me on my feet, I spotted the hand and the head. My stomach rebelled and I was on my knees, throwing up. I wanted to lie down and die, but Rune had me on my feet again. “We can’t stay,” he repeated. “We have to move.”

  I looked around and felt sick again. There were dead bears everywhere. The Beasts wielding their knives had chopped off hands, arms, heads and legs. The path was strewn with body parts, every one covered in red blood, rapidly blackening and stinking.

  I could see a Beast lying on his back, clearly dead, and several more who were injured.

  “Karl is gone.” Two of the Beasts were kneeling by their friend’s body. They looked devastated. “Those animals killed him!”

  “Put him in a cart.” Rune was giving orders. “We bury him at sunset.”

  So they didn’t eat their dead. That was a relief.

  “One of the girls is gone, too.”

  A little blonde I didn’t recognise was lifeless.

  “We’ll put her in with Karl. He liked blondes.”

  No talk of meat, either. I was still nauseated, but it was a relief. I sat on my heels, still in shock from the fight and the carnage.

  “Back inside.” Someone had set the cart I’d been thrown out of back on its wheels. I could see the horse, unhurt but frightened. Brant was calming it, rubbing its nose.

  Rune picked me up, and tossed me into the cart. The girls were in a tight wedge in the back, still wailing. When they saw me, they screamed. I guess I looked pretty awful, or maybe they were scared of Rune.

  He was closing the doors and with that my panic rose again. I leaned out and clutched his wrist.

  “Don’t leave me like this,” I begged. “If they come back, I can’t fight.”

  He paused and deliberated. All around us there was groaning and wailing. “If you run, they’ll find you,” he said. “And I won’t be able to come and get you.”

  “I’m not the village idiot!” I snapped. “I’m staying right here!”

  He undid the shackles. “Don’t wander off,” he warned me. Then the doors shut, and I was free to breathe again. I checked myself over. My hair was stiff with blood, and my arms were dipped in it. My tunic was now a collar and three ribbons of cloth. The skirt was ripped, too, but it could be repaired.