The Sword of Morning Star

by Richard Meade

  “Perhaps there is substance to them. I think you may count on substance to them,” Sandivar said encouragingly. “We intend—”

  He broke off, as there was a ferocious hammering at the door, and Death and Destruction sprang to their feet with manes abristle.

  The innkeeper’s face paled. “Oh, Gods!” he whispered. “That will be the watch of half-wolves making its rounds—Captain Fang and his company.” As the hammering continued, fit to break down the door, the innkeeper leaned close. “You have your papers? Since Albrecht became king, everyone must now carry papers to go about.”

  “We have no papers,” Helmut said.

  “Then you must hide. Otherwise—”

  “The Gods blast you, Chandel, open up this door and let us in, or we’ll chop it down!” From without that came in a half-wolf howl. Quickly Sandivar went to Death and Destruction, knelt between them with a hand on each, and appeared to speak something in their ears. Astonishingly, they dropped into positions of repose before the hearth, and as Sandivar gestured to an aroused Waddle in another corner of the room, the great bear sat down heavily, and a placid look crossed his face. Meanwhile, Helmut smiled coldly at the innkeeper.

  “Fret not,” he said. “Let them in.” And something about the tone of his voice put starch in the plump man’s backbone. Chandel even smiled a little as his eyes met those of Helmut. “Aye,” he said, and plodded to the door.

  The minute the chain was loosened, the half-wolves, all uniformed, crowded in, clawed hands on sword hilts, manner arrogant and swaggering. Chandel was pushed aside roughly by their captain. “Hell take you, man, the next time you’re so slow, your head will occupy a stake at the public bridge, as warning to the rest of the dolts—Now, give us wine, understand you?” There were ten of his kind with him, and one at his elbow nudged him now, so that he turned and saw Helmut.

  “Well,” he growled. “What have we here?”

  Helmut had dropped his right hand beneath the table at which they ate. “By your leave, Captain,” he said evenly, “only strangers passing through.”

  “Strangers from whence?” Then Fang saw the hounds. “Are these cursed brutes yours?”

  “Aye, Captain. But have no fear. They and the bear are well trained. They will not attack except on my command.”

  “On your command, eh?” Fang, backed by a couple of his men, stalked forward. “And who are you? Let me see your papers.”

  Helmut looked the half-wolf straight in the eyes, knowing that his kind could not bear the stare of a man for more than a few seconds. Involuntarily, Fang’s gaze moved away. “In sooth,” said Helmut then, with amusement in his voice, “we have no papers.”

  There was the rasp of steel as Fang’s sword came out. “Then you are under the King’s arrest! Take them!” he barked to the pair behind him. “The rest of you—kill those cursed dogs and that foul bear. As for you, Chandel, jest becomes truth; I think indeed I’ll plant your head on a sharpened post—” Then he broke off as Helmut slowly and with a cold smile brought out his right arm and laid the steel mace-hand on the table.

  Fang’s eyes blazed with surprise. For a half second, he stood rigid, staring at it. Then he howled: “Morning Star! Take him!”

  At that instant, Helmut threw the table over. It caught Fang and his two henchmen at the waist and knocked them back. Rage leaped from its sheath into Helmut’s hand, and he cried, “Boorn and Victory!” and sprang forward, even as Fang and the others scrambled to their feet and the rest of the half-wolves drew sword. Sandivar gave a strange, wild cry, and at that signal Death and Destruction came up smoothly and launched themselves, and Waddle was suddenly on his feet and lunging forward.

  Rage flickered and glittered, and steel rang on steel, as the three half-wolves struck at Helmut. Sandivar had drawn his own short sword, but stood back out of the fray, with Chandel cowering behind him. A half-wolf screamed as Death leaped in under his sword and knocked him backward, and another died without sound as Destruction’s jaws chopped shut. As Waddle had fought the mrogg, so now he fought the soldiers, huge paws swinging, his roaring terrible, and Helmut caught a glimpse of a half-wolf spinning away, head and helmet both crushed and half ripped off. In that instant, Fang lunged in, to what appeared an opening. His blade slid by Helmut, but Rage did not miss, and Fang lurched sideways, as neatly decapitated as if by a headsman. Then Helmut parried one sword thrust with the morning star and caught another on his blade. The rest of the half-wolves were scrambling for the door now, but Waddle was there before them, blocking it, and the two hounds coming at them from the other side. Meanwhile, Rage moved smoothly and killed another. The third, largest of the trio, was also bravest; Fang’s lieutenant, he was also the better swordsman. Coming at Helmut as the latter was off balance from the chop that had killed the second, he snarled triumphantly. Helmut turned just in time to let the blade slide by, but he was forced into a corner, and then it was sword against sword, man against half-wolf.

  “Aye, Morning Star,” the lieutenant growled as their blades rang together, “I’ll drink your blood ere this night is over!”

  “You think so, eh? And you have heard of me?” Helmut parried, went in; but the lieutenant was quick and warded off the thrust. With great strength he forced Helmut backward.

  “We have heard—And were warned to keep an eye out. I’ll cut that thing off and present it to King Albrecht for a present.” He pressed harder, his long blade a glittering veil of movement. The clang of iron on iron as Helmut fended every stroke was like the hammer and anvil in a busy smithy. “Then Terro shall be captain and perhaps more than captain. There! And there!” He slashed in hard, and then with confidence made his thrust. His blade leaped straight for Helmut’s belly, but Rage sheered it off so that the cold steel slipped just past Helmut’s flank and embedded itself in the wooden wall against which Helmut had been penned. Too late Terro realized the gravity of that; as he pulled back, Helmut struck the blade a ringing blow with the morning star that knocked it from his hand, and in the same instant Rage thrust out and killed him.

  Terro sank twisting to the floor, and Helmut leaped over him. The dogs had already wreaked great destruction, and Waddle, roaring terribly, was batting half-wolves left and right like ninepins. Into this turmoil, Helmut plunged, seeking more work for Rage and finding it. Blade and mace alike took their toll of the panic-stricken half-wolves, and suddenly the room fell silent, but for the panting of the dogs and the deep growl that rumbled in Waddle’s chest as he dropped to all fours. And Helmut stood alone among the corpses.

  Rage whispered as it went to rest again within his scabbard. Dazedly, the innkeeper edged from behind Sandivar’s back, staring incredulously at the shambles that once had been his public room. “All gone…” he whispered. “All gone…”

  Helmut strode to him. “Back to the world, man. Tell me, are more half-wolves in the village?”

  Chandel blinked at him. His lips moved without sound. Then he whispered, “Only two, one at either end of the little bridge across the stream. No more than a dozen were considered necessary in a town so small as ours.”

  “Only two,” said Sandivar. “No need to exercise ourselves concerning them. Death, Destruction—” And as the great dogs came to him, Sandivar dropped to his knees before them and whispered something to their bloody muzzles. Then he went to the door and threw it open, and the dogs leaped out into the night.

  “Now,” said Sandivar to Chandel, “I think you had better call the men of the village together. These bodies must be disposed of ere dawn, and more than that, we have much to talk about.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Hagen of Markau hated to see the darkness come.

  He stood now before a high, arched window in the Knights’ Hall of the large but austere castle of Markau and looked out into the last gray twilight. Below him, clustered around the castle like chicks around a hen, was the village of Markau, its streets and vacant places jammed with the flocks brought in by the peasants. The village, in turn, was
encircled by a high stone wall several feet thick, and atop this the fires were just beginning to blaze. Tonight, they were smaller and farther apart than the night before, and tomorrow night they would be smaller and farther apart than this night. By then, they would have started burning the furniture and timber of the houses of the village…

  Meanwhile, up in the tangle of the Frorwald, something was happening that he could well imagine. There, undoubtedly, rising from lair and covert as the light fled, the wolves were gathering. In his mind’s eye, he saw them: one or two emerging from this thicket or that one; padding along the paths; joined here and then there by others; growing into a hundred rivulets of wolves that merged into a dozen streams that at last joined to form a mighty river of the creatures—and that river then flowing down the hillsides toward Markau, where it spread out to encircle the village wall. By then, it was not even a river any longer; it was a sea, an ocean of gaunt gray creatures, one that, sooner or later, if help did not come, would engulf him, his people, and his holdings.

  He could already hear their howling in the distance. It began at twilight, too, and kept up all night long, a sound fit to freeze the blood and madden the senses with horror. A single wolf howl was eerie enough—that continuous weird ululation from hundreds, nay, thousands, of throats was almost more than the human brain could stand.

  A single intelligence, of course, bound them all together, directed them. That would be Albrecht, working through his half-wolves and then through the great black wolf that was the leader of this enormous pack. That wolf, thought Hagen, not without grudging admiration, was a general. She knew war.

  Even now, she would be disposing her forces, the great mass of wolves that made a continuous ring around the town, that had already driven in every man, woman, child, every horse, cow, sheep, pig and fowl, from the lands of Markau and jammed them all up here behind the walls. All night long would those wolves keep watch, just out of either crossbow or longbow range, their howling ruining sleep. But, so long as the fires burned, they would not attack. Sooner or later, though, when the fires went out and there was no wood left with which to rebuild them, the wolves would come over the walls. They could, of course, build no scaling ladders nor any other machines, but there was such a multitude of them that wolf could climb on wolf until they had made the top; and the Black Wolf, keenly intelligent as she was, must already have that planned.

  Thus the nights at Markau: unending nightmare. Nor were the days much better. Hagen thought with sadness of the good men at arms and knights whose bones lay gnawed and scattered out there beyond the walls, lost in attempts to counterattack, carry pleas for help to the other lords, or simply in efforts to gather precious wood and necessary fodder now so nearly exhausted in the town.

  Even yesterday one last attempt had been made to break out. Hagen had wanted to lead it himself, but his lieutenant and chief fighting man, Marlino, had set himself against that. “Nay, sire, though I know you welcome the risk. But without your cool direction here, all Markau is finally lost. I myself shall take the lead—”

  It had been a fine, bright day. The meadows around Markau drowsed in the sun, and there was no sign of the wolves which had thronged them the night before. Hagen almost let himself feel hopeful as he bade farewell to the six armored knights on armored horses—all he could spare from his slender defensive forces. “If you get through to Count Bomas, bid him by all the favors he owes me, including the gift of his life saved in warfare, to gather every soldier, every , huntsman, and every man at arms he can lay his hands on, to spread the alarm throughout the country to the other lords, and to come at once…”

  “Aye, my lord.” Marlino touched his helm in salute, then pulled down his visor. He signaled to his command. Then the gates swung briefly open, the armored knights on their big war-horses thundered out, the gates slammed shut.

  They went at full tilt across the meadows, those brave men, with hunting lances ready in case they were attacked. But nothing stirred in the drowsy morning, and Hagen began to think that they would make it.

  But, of course, he had been wrong. The Black Wolf had waited only until the men were out of bowshot of the village.

  Then, when, viewed from the tower of the castle, the knights were but the size of toys, the wolves suddenly appeared. Magically, from bush and swale and gully and thicket they materialized; out of the high grass and ripe grain, uncut now for so long, they swarmed; and all at once the six mounted men were beset by wolves, at least a hundred.

  The steeds, so bold against a human enemy, were terrified by the sight of so many savage animals. They redoubled efforts to outrace the enormous pack now swarming after them. Hagen stood watching, helpless, cursing, knowing there was nothing he could do… And then the wolves caught up.

  A dozen died under lance thrusts in the first instant, but what were a dozen in a throng so great? The horses, finding themselves in that sea of animals, reared and kicked; but the sharp fangs of the wolves were snapping remorselessly, virtually devouring the poor animals alive. One after the other went down in that surging ocean of gray fur, and Hagen could faintly hear their screaming. It did not last very long.

  Then the unhorsed knights arose, in full armor, out of all that turmoil; and as their swords flashed bright in the dazzling morning sun, Hagen regained hope. But it died quickly, for the sheer weight of numbers bore the armored men down again, and a man in armor, flat on his back, does not easily arise. Once or twice, they struggled to their feet, only to be knocked down again. Then, their strength exhausted from dealing with that weight of iron, they lay still.

  Hagen could imagine what it had been like to be one of those armored knights sprawled flat, sword knocked from hand. He could imagine the horrible sound of fangs gnawing fruitlessly at the hinged and solid iron, the overpowering rankness. He could imagine, too, the fatigue that came from lifting all that weight of steel, then being overwhelmed and pushed back down, and this over and over until the man inside the shell was strengthless, lying there panting, his body bathed in its own moisture and his need for water terrible.

  It took every ounce of will and courage Hagen owned in the ensuing thirty-six hours to keep himself from sallying out in a vain attempt to aid them. But he knew that to do so would only be to sacrifice more men in the same horrible way. So somehow he held himself in check, though he stood on the city wall and cursed and shouted at the distant gray blot that swarmed over the downed men like ants across a sweet. Beyond that, though, there was nothing he could do.

  And when he had seen at last the wolves turn away from the bright-gleaming armored blotches in the meadow (this afternoon; the horses long since were gnawed bones) he had known that it was indeed all over…

  A footfall behind him caused him now to whirl.

  “Nissilda,” he said.

  “Aye, Father.” His daughter, clothed in spotless, flowing samite, was nineteen, tall, slender, yet full-breasted and full-hipped. Blonde hair like pure gold, bound back from a high white forehead by a fillet, flowed down her back and shimmered in the candle flame. Lovely as she was, had she been daughter of any lord but Hagen she would have been married already, and advantageously; but Hagen, widower, was loathe to part with her. And so he had not pressed a match upon her but had waited until she found someone who suited her fancy and engaged her heart. Such a one had not yet come along—

  She came to stand beside him, almost as tall as he, and took his rough hand in her soft one. “They come again,” she said.

  “Yes. Are you afraid, daughter?”

  She shook her head. “Oddly, no, not even after all the horrors we’ve endured.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I cannot say.” Nissilda’s voice was soft; she had to raise it to be heard above the increased volume of the howling as the watch fires flared now from every wall. “It’s only that I feel it in my bones that this shall pass, that we shall be delivered.”

  Hagen sighed and leaned against the window stool. Oh, they were out there, all
right, by the scores and hundreds. “Would that I had your faith,” he said. Then he touched his sword hilt. “This shall I vow. That fang you shall never feel, except the long one I myself wield.”

  “Such thoughts are not to be entertained,” she said quite calmly. “Now, you have not eaten, and your dinner is laid. Come and eat.” And she led him from the hall. But there was no place in the castle where he could not hear the howling.

  “To cross the Frorwald?” That had been the incredulous cry of the burgomaster when Sandivar had presented his plea for help. “No, impossible, quite impossible. Grateful are we for your release of us from the tyranny of the half-wolves, so long as there is no retribution. But we are neither politicians, nor are we fighting men, but only honest farmers. Good Sandivar, ask not that of us which we cannot do.”

  And there had been so much honesty in his face, such agreement on the countenances of the others of his village, that neither Sandivar nor Helmut could doubt the uselessness of seeking aid here. When they were in their room together, having dined and drunk, Helmut addressed the older man: “Now what?”

  Sandivar paced the room. “We still must cross the Frorwald.”

  “Then we shall hack our way through alone. With Rage and Vengeance, Death and Destruction—”

  “Do you think the Black Wolf is a fool?” cried Sandivar.

  The intensity of his voice astonished Helmut. “I know nothing of the Black Wolf.”

  “And that because you were too young to remember the day that she from Boorn was banished by your father, Sigrieth.”

  “What?”