In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  Surprised at its own clumsiness, the beast struggled to rise, trembling with the effort as a sudden jolt of pain gave it cause to re-evaluate the truth of its circumstances.

  Clasping a taloned hand to its flank, the beast could feel the warm wet seeping there. When it pulled that taloned hand away it was dismayed to find that there was a measure of fresh blood about its fingers and palm, glittering darkly in the pale moonlight. The flintlock had found its mark. For the first time, the beast knew real fear. It pushed itself from the bole of the oak, and staggered off into the enfolding darkness of the night as those flaming torches gathered ever nearer.

  CHAPTER 2

  Knightmares...

  The withered trees sprout from a desolate plain, clawing their way toward a blood red sky, churning like some mad tidal crush as dark clouds race overhead, clouds that swirl like dervishes, faster and faster, causing a sickness of imbalance in any who is fool enough to stare upon them for too long.

  He runs helter skelter through the rough hewn landscape, fleeing for his life in a blind panic from something that lurks between the trunks of those densely gathered and twisted trees.

  He dares not look back, for to look back from whence he has come would enable his pursuer to fix on him, to run him down and tear him limb from limb. To rend him from this life like a maddened dog might tear flesh from bone.

  But he cannot help himself, his fear is matched only buy a burning curiosity to understand what it is that pursues him. What it is that has caused such an unutterable dread to possess him so completely. Even as he runs, he turns, knows that it is the last and most foolish thing he will ever do, but he cannot help himself, he has to look...

  Sigourd’s eyes flickered open and he sat up suddenly on a bed draped with the fur pelts of beasts from his father’s forests. He didn’t at first realize how hard he was breathing, the terror of the nightmare still written into him, and only after a few moments, when he understood that he was indeed safely in his bed chamber with the morning light shining weakly upon him, did Sigourd relent to let his heart rate ease, and his breathing steadily deepen.

  The nightmare had been a regular occurrence these past few months, but that familiarity did not serve to diminish its impact upon him. Always the same, pursued through a nameless forest by a faceless terror, Sigourd had almost resigned himself to the mystery of his troubled sleep. He had considered consultation with the royal seers, but had decided that to do anything but keep his own council on this matter might be incautious, his vivid dreams viewed as weakness. The heir to the throne of Corrinth Vardis could not afford to be branded with any label that might endanger the authority of himself or his family. Not in these troubled times.

  Throwing his legs over the side of his bed he sat there for another moment, considering the soft morning light filtering through the gauze over the high window, and the deep purple shadows that lay about the room here and there between the bars of light.

  It was barely daybreak by his estimation, far sooner than he’d intended to rise. But since the advent of these troubling nightmares he’d been waking earlier and earlier. Perhaps this was what awaited him as Regent. A life of restless sleep and moments of troubled solitude in the weak light of dawns barely broken. He’d known his father to lie awake all the long night, staring into the darkness for hour on end in the hopes of seeing the solution to one dire matter of state or another.

  The prospect filled him with a glumness that he knew would dog him all that day. For appearances sake he must make a supreme effort to submerge those dark feelings beneath a veneer of royal civility. Today Sigourd would choose a wife.

  Cal Whiteheart was a decorated battle veteran of a hundred campaigns in the service of The Regent Fellhammer, lord of Corrinth Vardis. He’d seen bitter fighting across all the lands of the known world, and even done a measure of bloodletting in a few places yet to be inked onto any cartographer’s map. From the blood riven ice wastes of Hok’ur to the seemingly endless war to overthrow the tyrant Balrog Neize at the very gates of The White City of Anur, he’d seen and done it all. Retirement from the field was the hardest battle he’d ever fought.

  Of course no-one had acknowledged it as retirement, they’d called it a re-tasking. He’d been ‘re-tasked’ with the stewardship of the young lord Sigourd’s entry into manhood. A position of supreme honor that it was assumed he would be proud to accept, which of course he had been. But he did so miss the old days. Alas duty was duty, and that was a value that ran through Cal like the iron core of a mountain.

  These were the thought’s that swam in his mind as Cal buffed the imperial crest in his hand until it caught the light just so. The brooch glinting to his satisfaction, Cal moved over to where Sigourd stood facing a floor length mirror, adjusting the straps of his leather jerkin in anticipation of the royal gala that was shortly to commence. Cal began to fasten the brooch to Sigourd’s chest, but the young man raised his hands in mild objection, ‘I have it, Cal’.

  Cal, used to such repudiations of his formal duties passed the brooch to Sigourd, ‘Of course, my lord’, stepping back a pace.

  Sigourd deftly fastened the brooch to his chest, and stepped back himself to admire the reflection of the handsome, if ostentatiously dressed, young man in the mirror. Indeed, Sigourd’s clothing would have been the envy of any young court fop, eager to impress his counterparts with elaborate embroidering and delicate, colorful silk weaving.

  ‘I look a fool,’ said Sigourd after a moments consideration, ‘It isn’t me at all.’

  Cal understood that Sigourd wasn’t just referring to the brooch and his attire. He knew of the young lord’s desire to be free of bearing the weight of responsibility for an entire kingdom on his shoulders, and pitied him for it.

  ‘Fear not, lord’, he said, ‘responsibility is a funny thing. Although it may seem a tall task it has the possibility to develop the best in us all’.

  Cal reached inside his jacket, drawing out a metal object that he began to fasten to Sigourd’s forearm. The vambrace was a simple looking thing, a steel sleeve designed to fit over the forearm of the wearer, it was engraved with the crest of Sigourd’s family, the hare and the boar.

  Sigourd’s eyes widened in delight, ‘Cal, I--’

  ‘You’re old enough to take a wife, you’re old enough for this,’ the old soldier cut in. ‘Besides, you’ve been eying it long enough. We’ll call it a wedding gift. One you may have cause to need if this business with the Morays is not resolved peacefully.’

  He finished buckling the vambrace, stepped back to admire his handiwork. The metal sleeve glinted in the morning light as Sigourd turned his arm to study it in more detail.

  ‘There, the very picture of nobility,’ said Cal. ‘You’ll turn some heads no doubt.’

  ‘Looking like this,’ said Sigourd gloomily, I’ll be turning a few stomachs too.’

  ‘Ha,’ Cal barked, clapping Sigourd affectionately on the shoulder, ‘that’s the spirit lad!’

  The city of Corrinth Vardis was at the centre of an agglomeration of townships that had sprung up in the north western planes of the land of Atos. Over the course of a thousand or more years the townships had been incrementally fused together via means of trade, conflict, alliance, famine and countless other turbulent happenings. Corrinth Vardis, amongst the larger and more prosperous of the settlements, had come to be recognized as the capital of the lands by virtue of its proximity to several tributaries of the River Atos’halla, a primary route for trade and expansion throughout the region. Like some oceanic leviathan Corrinth Vardis had worked its tentacles into the surrounding settlements, each successive ruler inheriting the authority of the capital city.

  The current regent of Corrinth Vardis, the Lord Horix Fellhammer, was a man both feared and respected by those in political circles not only in the council chambers of Corrinth Vardis or the disparate townships of Atos, but more further afield also.

  Atos was but one of several principalities sharing the same land mass that had
been vying for dominance since the time of Fellhammer’s great, great grandfather. Other noble houses in neighboring lands would occasionally war abroad or seek retribution for attacks made upon their own territories, overtures of war that led to outright conflict were an expected part of the development of these lands. It was a constantly shifting malaise of border disputes and confrontations over hereditary titles, punctuated by the occasional lull in hostilities afforded by either careful diplomacy or continental exhaustion as the nations healed and licked wounds in the wake of the last major conflict.

  For nearly four years the borders of Atos had remained relatively unmolested, save for the occasional incursions by nomadic tribes of Goethe or Urutal, and the populace had enjoyed this time of relative peace. Now however, there were rumblings of bordering houses readying for invasion.

  It was time again for gentle diplomacy, and if that was unsuccessful, then The Regent Fellhammer was prepared to break the fury of his armies over the heads of those who threatened the sanctity of Atos.

  Of course, The Regent being a man well schooled in the arts of both diplomacy and war understood the need to impress upon his enemies the depth of his own resources. He also understood that Corrinth Vardis was not as strong as it had been in the time of his boyhood. Famine and conflict had led to the decimation of his western armies, and his position was not as secure as it once might have been. Alliances would have to be formed, and how better to strengthen a bond than by forging it in blood.

  His only son and heir, Sigourd, was approaching the age of ascension, the time when a boy would become a man and strike out to forge his own destiny. It was also the time when, as tradition had it, that that boy man might take a wife.

  Marriage between the houses had been a time honored way to strengthen ties that might come easily unravelled in the absence of responsibility to one’s own family. If Sigourd were to wed the daughter of a rival ruler, and produce an heir of his own it would immediately position Corrinth Vardis as a far less attractive target to those that would see the family Fellhammer unseated.

  So it had been declared that Sigourd would choose from the prospective daughters of several other great houses, and a union would be made and sealed tight with the consummation of that ritual. However, there were two minor impediments to the plan. The first was the question of which house to tie the proverbial knot with. Several viable options presented themselves equally as opportunity and risk. Then of course there was the issue of the young heir himself.

  Much to The Regents displeasure, his son had proven less than amenable to the idea of having his ‘future bartered for the sake of political leverage’, or words to that effect.

  The throne room was as large as any audience chamber in any kingdom this side of the Atos’halla, and almost as old as the city of Corrinth Vardis itself. Stone masons had labored for months to erect the great stone walls and pillars that supported a roof nearly fifty feet high, with an interior support lattice of wooden beams that was so geometrically marvelous as to be something of a work of art in itself. Radiant daylight beamed through a vast circular, stained glass window that was easily the span of five men of the realm laid end to end. The multi faceted glass spearing the light into various rays of amethyst, gold, spring green or aquamarine. That radiance was designed to fall upon and illuminate the great central dais, where steps carved from marble led to the hallowed Throne Of The Regent. Hanging from that lattice work at semi regular intervals, great banners that ran the height of the chamber from ceiling to floor depicted the deeds of heroes of the realm and regents past. Horix Fellhammer was depicted on one such banner himself, in a scene from his boyhood made famous by the awed whispers of those present to witness it. At the age of thirteen summers, while on a hunting expedition the young Horix had single handedly slain a wild tarnoc that had miraculously turned the tables on its hunters. The detail of the embroidery on the hanging was quite breathtaking, the artisan had captured the rabid essence of the beast, its fearsome tusks and shaggy hair. To look upon the tapestry you could almost hear the thing’s savage bellowing, smell its fetid breath coming in great noxious clouds. Captured equally well was the stoic heroism of the young Lord Horix himself. Spear in hand he faced down the tarnoc, his face a mask of hardened resolve.

  That encounter had been thirty five years ago, but the boy in the tapestry and the man sitting upon the raised dais that overlooked a throne room alive with the dancing and merriment of a court in full celebration, was unmistakably the same person. That same hard resolve was set into the stiff jaw line and unflinching eyes of The Regent as he was now. A taciturn man not given to easy familiarity, but whose sense of duty was second to not another sole. Dedicated to his family, his people and his kingdom he was a man loved and loathed in equal measure for those very reasons.

  Seated beside her husband, was one of the beauties of the land, the Lady Veronique Fellhammer. Herself the daughter of another king from a land bordering Atos to the east, their marriage had been arranged to end the unrelenting conflict between the two nations. At first, the union had simply been a necessity of state, but Horix had quickly fallen in love with the beautiful princess from the west, as had his people, for hers was a gentle if troubled soul. The marriage had lasted well, and so had the peace.

  Before them, the people of the court danced and swirled to the music of the bards, who played their instruments with great vigor as plates of smoked meats and gloryberries were brought before them, and great quantities of fine ales and dark wines were quaffed in the flickering glow of the many candles that burned brilliantly around the vast chamber. The sound of the merriment floated up into the vault like ceiling of the throne room, lost there amongst the shadows that nestled amongst the fine latticework.

  Sigourd sat beside his mother and father, his expression one of forced levity. Standing beside Sigourd, Cal looked out at the crowd with an almost mercurial glimmer in his eyes, ‘You don’t look too impressed by all the finery on display, lad,’ he quipped quietly to Sigourd, who snorted derisively in response, ‘They’re just here to eat and drink at my father’s expense.’

  ‘They’re here for you, lad,’ said Cal. ‘One day you’ll lead these people. They have as vested an interest in your affairs as you do. Besides, a bit of a drink and a dance is good for everyone. Spirits need to be lifted in times like these.’

  ‘The only spirits getting lifted are the ones that come out of a cask,’ replied Sigourd glumly.

  At that moment, the music suddenly died down, and from the crowd stepped forward a courtier, who bowed theatrically before The Regent and his family before turning to address the assembled court.

  ‘On this great day the house of Fellhammer would welcome you to join us as Master Sigourd begins his journey of matrimony. Today, we celebrate our land’s heir to be, and would bid welcome to those guests that have traveled here to share in this joyous occasion.’

  With that, the courtier withdrew from his robes a parchment which he deftly unraveled, began to read aloud; ‘From house Cordovo, the Lady Magritte. A beautiful girl in her late teens stepped forward, her fair hair framing an oval, freckled face. She moved to the dais and cAtosseyed before Sigourd and his family.

  ‘Her father’s in bed with the shipping cartels out of Andulasia,’ whispered Cal into Sigourd’s ear, ‘and apparently she’s in bed with all the rest.’

  Sigourd looked up at Cal, his expression one of mild annoyance.

  ‘From house Grenstien, the Lady Aubal’, continued the courtier, his voice echoing into the now quiet assemblage. Another attractive young lady stepped forward and curtsying at the foot of the dais before moving back into the crowd. She caught Sigourd’s eye as she turned to leave, and he was surprised to see something like an animal avarice there, decidedly out of place on so pretty a face. Again, Cal leaned froward to offer commentary, ‘This one’s a dab hand in the kitchen so I hear.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Sigourd skeptically.

  ‘Makes a bloody good spit roast,’ sniggered Cal
, barely able to hold his laughter in check.

  ‘You’re an incorrigible rogue Whiteheart,’ scolded Sigourd.

  ‘Aye, lord. It’s one of the things your father pays me for,’ said Cal, ‘the other is to make sure you receive sound council in all matters.’

  ‘That could be the future queen of the realm you’re talking about so lewdly.’

  ‘I doubt it, she is far to well manicured to suit my lord’s fancy,’

  Sigourd sat back and studied the old war dog. Could he know? But how? Sigourd had been so careful. There was not a trace of anything other than enjoyment at his own crude humor on Whiteheart’s face, and Sigourd decided that he was being overly sensitive. His secret had to be safe.

  He chanced a glance across the throne room to a far corner where a serving girl tended table, pouring a generous measure of the local tipple for an overly loud and particularly odious noble from one of the city’s merchant families.

  The serving girl was a beauty beyond all compare in the eyes of Sigourd. The pale skin of her face, almost the color of fresh snow, was framed by hair so raven dark it seemed to enhance the wild glitter behind her eyes.

  Even to look upon her from such a distance was to set Sigourd’s heart a’flutter, like a humming bird caged within his chest. It was all the young noble could do to stop himself from calling to her, so powerful was his yearning.

  ‘From house Encarnadine, the Lady Morova.’ the booming voice of the courtier snapped Sigourd from his reverie. He looked quickly toward the next young hopeful to stand before the dais, a fair haired thing with an unappealing pout set into her expression, something Sigourd found distressingly commonplace amongst the young ladies of the court. A pronounced sense of entitlement worn like a token of status. It seemed to Sigourd that no one had noticed his momentary lapse in concentration, or the root of it. He would continue to play the game his father and tradition had laid out before him, stalling the betrothal until time had finally run out. At least his secret was safe for now, or so he believed.