In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  The other girl was quick to chime in with her own appraisal of the situation, ‘I think that the Lady Magritte would make a fine pairing with our young lord. Or perhaps the lady Survela. She has a very pretty smile.’

  ‘Yes, she does at that,’ offered Tumi, ‘but I fear she’s not low born enough for our lord.’

  Veronique flashed a warning glance at Tumi, who looked away, suddenly finding herself intently interested in the half finished embroidery in her lap.

  But the girl was right of course, mused Veronique. Sigourd had taken far too much interest in a mere serving girl, and there was no doubt that amongst the young ladies of noble birth who were privy to this information, which of course was all of them, there would be no small amount of resentment flowering from this difficult situation.

  ‘I’m sure we will know my son’s decision in due course,’ offered Veronique, her tone leaving little doubt in the minds of her sewing circle that the subject was no longer open for discussion.

  Veronique was about to invite the ladies to finish their needlework and retire for the evening when she was saved the trouble by the sudden arrival of someone barging noisily into her chambers. Mortaron flung open the doors to the chamber without warning, striding into the room heedless of what decorum expected of him.

  Waiting in the shadowed doorway behind The Baron was a giant of a man, clad in black armor and draped in the pelts of wolves that hung from him in a most gruesome fashion. His face, partly obscured by the jittery shadows cast by the firelight, was brutal, appearing for all the world like it was carved from stone. Even the eyes betrayed little sign of any humanity, instead presenting the man with the aspect of some apex predator, a cold dead stare that spoke only of the horrors they had witnessed. The stone man’s name was Huron, and he was The Baron’s personal enforcer.

  Coming to stand before his sister, the girls of the sewing circle dared not look up to meet the cold stare of The Baron, their faces turned resolutely toward the floor of the chamber in fear.

  ‘Leave us’ said Veronique to the assembled women, who quickly gathered up their things and fled from the hearth-side, filing out timidly past the towering Huron, who reached in to close the door behind the last of the girls, leaving Veronique and Mortaron alone in the room.

  ‘Your message said it was urgent,’ stated The Baron flatly.

  Slowly, Veronique laid aside the needle and patchwork in her hands, turned to face her brother.

  ‘How is it I know how to knock when entering the private chambers of another, and you so clearly do not? Were our parents so selective with our education in the art of manners?’

  Mortaron snorted derisively, ‘If you’ve something to say then I’m here to listen, otherwise do not tax me of my time. I’ve more pressing concerns that picking out fancy colors for needlework.’

  ‘Not more pressing than this I’m sure,’ said Veronique matter of factly, ‘I saw someone at court today, during the celebrations.’

  ‘And this matters because...?’

  Because this person could unravel our great secret, brother,’ said Veronique with no small amount of bitter delight. At this, Mortaron’s eyes widened in surprise, and he shot forward to snatch Veronique roughly by the arm, dragging her to her feet. She cried out with the pain of it, but The Baron did not relax his grip one bit, ‘don’t test me woman, you better than any other should know how limited my patience is. Tell me who it was that you saw.’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’ protested Veronique as she struggled against her brother.

  ‘You know what is at stake!’ he exclaimed.

  Veronique laughed, but there was no mirth to the sound, ‘I know better than any what is at stake. I’ve carried this burden with me almost the whole of my life!’

  ‘I see your reputation is well deserved, Baron,’ said another voice from somewhere behind them.

  Turning quickly, Mortaron squinted into the shadows of the large chamber, struggling to make out the source of the sound. The voice itself was as coarse as crushed glass, and when one of the shadows began to shift, stepping into the flickering light of the fire, it was plain to see that it was a face well matched to the voice. A face which belonged to none other than the well groomed man that had caused Veronique so much concern to see.

  Even in the poor light of the fire, it was plain to see that the man was possessed of a certain animal quality that accounted for his harsh appearance. The eyes, deep set in an angular brow, twinkled with a primal light, and the mouth seemed to bear something of the dimensions of some carnivore’s snout. When he spoke, his canines which were unnaturally long by human standards, flashed wickedly in his mouth. But his appearance was not so remarkable that he would not pass for human in the minds of those without the imagination to consider he might be anything different.

  Mortaron could barely keep the disgust from his voice, ‘You’re one of them. One of those things!’

  The intruder smiled a wicked feral smile, the canines glittering in a mouth full of razor sharp teeth too finely tapered to be designed for anything but rending flesh.

  ‘Polite society might label me monster, but I think for all your finery you might wear the title better than I, Baron.’

  The intruder inclined his head in the direction of the Lady Veronique, ‘It has been a long time my lady. I’m gratified to see that even after all these many years you still remember me.’

  Veronique was too shocked to frame a response, and instead it was The Baron who spoke, ‘You know this creature?’ he asked his sister.

  Veronique’s eyes were wide with fear, yet still she remained silent, her mouth locked shut for fear that if she were to open it all that would come tumbling out would be screams.

  ‘What is it you want?’ demanded Mortaron.

  ‘I have come to tell you that the the race of the wulfen is here to take back what is rightfully theirs.’

  ‘Sigourd,’ exclaimed Veronique.

  ‘Just so,’ nodded the intruder, ‘these events you set in motion twenty years ago, now speed toward their conclusion.’

  Mortaron stepped toward the man in the shadows and drew his blade, its keen, murderous edge glinting coldly. He fixed the other man with a penetrating stare, ‘I do not hear the words of forest dwelling savages. I take their heads.’

  The light of the fire writhed in the eyes of the intruder as he levelly met The Barons gaze, ‘Of course you do baron. But a quick stroke with a sharp blade will not keep your secret...this time.’

  ‘We shall see,’ and without further preamble The Baron rushed at the mysterious man, his sword carving an arc of flashing death before his charge.

  But faster than Veronique could see, the intruder sidestepped The Barons charge, and leveled his attacker with a thunderous backhand that sent Mortaron sprawling to the floor, his sword clattering uselessly out of reach across the tiles.

  Before the attacker could press his advantage, Veronique had filled her lungs with a deafening scream, and an instant later the heavy door to the chamber came crashing in with a sound like a tidal wave splintering the hull of a doomed ship.

  Huron stood amongst the wreckage of the doorway, a mighty war axe gripped firmly between his mailed fists, its twin blade heads ready to deal uncompromising death.

  The towering enforcer stalked into the chamber, his eyes searching diligently for any sign of threat. But there was nothing he could see to give him cause to swing his axe.

  ‘My lord?’ he asked, momentary confusion at the scene before him giving Huron pause.

  Mortaron struggled quickly to his feet, cast about for the man that had struck him down, but of the mysterious intruder there was no sign. All that remained as indicator of his presence was a set of open doors that led to a balcony overlooking the courtyard below, where drapes billowed gently in the cool night air.

  The intruder had been so quick, moving with a speed and grace that one would be hard pressed to find amongst the races of mortal men. Veronique had only known its like once before, many
years previously.

  She shuddered to think that the mistakes of her past had brought this danger before her in the present, and now Sigourd was threatened. All because she had been too afraid to do what she knew to be right.

  Mortaron re-sheathed his sword and straightened his robe. His face was flushed red with a simmering rage that lent him the aspect of some furious demon in the dim light of Veronique’s chamber.

  ‘Seal the castle, we have an intruder,’ he ordered of the towering Huron, who nodded in compliance. Mortaron turned to Veronique, was about to speak again when a tremendous and deafening roar, as of a volcanic detonation, erupted from somewhere in the courtyard outside. The very castle itself shook on its foundations, a great rumbling rolling through the building, the chandeliers in the chamber swaying to a degree beyond their design, the candles guttering and winking like the eyes of frightened animals as dust cascaded down from the roof above.

  Veronique was cast to the floor, screaming once more in terror at this latest surprise horror. It was all Mortaron and Huron could do to retain their balance, yet still they covered their heads in case the foundations of the ancient castle were inclined to give up their timeless defiance of gravity’s might.

  As the rumbling rolled inexorably onwards and the foundations continued to shake in the wake of the titanic eruption, Huron threw himself toward Veronique to use his body as cover for hers. Offering himself up as a shield for her safety, she sheltered there beneath him for long moments until finally the roaring and rumbling and quaking subsided.

  When all appeared to be quiet once more, Huron gently helped Veronique to her feet. He did it with a gentleness that belied his monstrous appearance.

  ‘Thank you, lord.’ Veronique offered quietly, the shock of the last few moments still lingering about her. Huron nodded, but did not meet the eyes of the lady, instead keeping his gaze directed carefully toward the floor.

  When at last he did look up, his eyes met with the scrutinizing stare of The Baron, who looked upon him with no small measure of distaste. Like a well heeled dog that fears his master’s displeasure, Huron looked quickly away before turning smartly and stalking from the chamber to carry out his orders.

  The Baron did not look to his sister’s safety before marching from the chamber himself, his face still flushed red, but his expression betraying some other emotion that Veronique could not interpret.

  Still shaking with fright, she made her way cautiously to the open doors of the balcony where those drapes billowed more fervently than before, and a wave of unrelenting heat could be felt through the opening.

  As Veronique stepped through the doorway onto the balcony proper the sight that greeted her snatched her breath away. From across the courtyard below, the east section of the castle was a blazing ruin. Flames many dozens of feet high scaled the walls of the buildings there, and entire sections of that part of the structure had been blown wide to the night. The ferocious heat of the blaze was such that with the direction of the wind it carried far enough that Veronique could feel it stinging her cheeks. The fire was spreading to other parts of the building that had not been demolished by whatever had caused the apocalyptic explosion.

  Scattered throughout the courtyard were the smoking remains of several structures that had been caught in the blast wave. Amongst the ruins and the wreckage she could see the twisted and fused corpses of the unfortunate inhabitants of those structures. Scattered here and there amongst the destruction like miserable withered petals.

  Tears began to fall freely from her eyes as she surveyed the carnage before her, and as much as she wept for the victims of that destruction, she wept too with the knowledge that things were about to change forever.

  CHAPTER 4

  Thieves in the night...

  The black smoke was acrid, it billowed relentlessly through the tight confines of the corridor and Sigourd was unable to breathe without pulling lungfuls of the choking soot and ash down his throat. He tried in vain to cover his mouth with a scarf that he’d pulled from the corpse of a court serf, but it was doing a poor job of filtering the hot, poisonous air.

  Here in the servant’s wing, the situation was dire. By Sigourd’s estimation the explosion had come from the direction of the weapons chambers. Undoubtedly the result of the gunpowder stores secreted there being lit. There were over fifty barrels of the explosive powder hidden in a secured vault below the foundations of the west wing, which would be called upon in times of conflict to power the lethal weaponry of his father’s armies. Not any more.

  Weather by accident or design, those powder stores were undoubtedly gone, vaporized in the time it would take Sigourd’s heart to hammer out a single beat.

  Unfortunately for most of the castles servant’s, they were quartered in a building adjacent to the weapons store. That building was now mostly unidentifiable ruin, and what remained was being swept by fire, consumed hungrily by roiling flames as a strong wind from the east fanned them to even greater heights of ravenous consumption.

  Outside, men at arms and other inhabitants of the palace had gathered to fight the terrifying blaze, to stop it spreading to the rest of the castle before all was lost. Sigourd cursed himself for not being there with them, for not standing shoulder to shoulder with those brave souls. But Sigourd had to find her first. Find Isolde and get her to safety. That was all he could think of doing. The guilt lanced him like a blade driven into his belly, but he forced it down and pressed on into the billowing smoke.

  All around the sounds of shouting and the groans of the dying filtered through the darkness toward him. He knew that Isolde had been given a room near the north west section of the building, the closest part of this wing to the site of the explosion. He prayed to the gods that she had survived unharmed, that he would find her amongst the survivors, wide eyed in terror, shaking like a leaf with fright but otherwise unscathed.

  As he progressed, members of the serving staff rushed past him, coming out of the smoke like phantoms they didn’t stop to question what their lord was doing in this part of the building, so near to the danger. They were too terrified to see anything but their hopes of escape. They fled past Sigourd into the ruined warren of the servant’s quarters.

  Voices nearby. Calling for help. Sigourd strained to discern the direction they had come from, and when they came again he shouted out, ‘This way, to me!’

  He continued shouting as he moved deeper into the darkness, struggling against the unrelenting black smoke and the blistering, scolding heat.

  More figures ahead, moving amongst the shadows. Sigourd shouted again, ‘To me!’ and the figures began to move in his direction, two serving girls that Sigourd recognized and a senior footman that he did not. Huddled together, they staggered toward Sigourd, who clambered through the twisted wreckage to pull them further along the corridor to a point where the heat was less intense, the smoke less choking.

  ‘Are any of you hurt?’ he asked quickly, scanning them for signs of injury.

  ‘No lord’ replied the footman, blinking in surprise to see who his rescuer happened to be, ‘just a little shaken.’

  ‘Then lead these women back along the corridor to safety. Follow the curve of the wall if the smoke becomes too thick to see.’

  ‘I will lord, but what of you?’ replied the footman, a note of grave concern in his voice.

  ‘I must find someone. A serving girl named Isolde. Do you know her?’

  ‘I saw her moments before the explosion,’ offered one of the terrified serving girls, her voice cracking with fear, ‘she was heading back to her room to rest.’

  ‘Go, follow the wall,’ Sigourd commanded, and without further delay he threw himself into the pall of smoke as the trio of terrified servants moved off quickly in the other direction.

  It was hard to tell if Sigourd had the right room, he’d only been here once before. Dressed as a common footman he’d secreted his way to Isolde’s room in the dead of night for a chance to lie with her. Now, surrounded by all this ma
dness, it was a tall task to negotiate the corridors with any certainty let alone pick one door from another. But Sigourd was fairly certain he’d arrived at the right place, and besides which he didn’t have the luxury of time to mull it over.

  He swung open the door and ducked inside, relieved to be out of the corridor and its choking effluent. He called out, ‘Isolde!?’ but no answer came.

  Instead, what greeted him was the sight of a room turned over. Not by any explosive shaking of the castle, but as if a struggle had taken place. Clothes and furniture were sprawled about the room in a manner that indicated someone had deliberately been searching Isolde’s possessions, casting them carelessly about the place as they went.

  Sigourd looked for any sign of Isolde, but there was nothing to provide any clues as to her whereabouts. And then it came; a faint chirruping from under a pile of discarded clothes.

  Moving to the noise Sigourd pulled at the pile until revealed beneath it there lay a bird cage, fallen on its side, and within it Isolde’s pretty little nightingale.

  The bird fluttered about inside the cage, fearful of the gathering heat and smoke.

  The young lord reached down to pick the cage up, lifting it from the floor so that he might peer through it at the frightened creature inside, ‘Where did she go eh, my little friend?’

  The bird was something Isolde said she had picked up last summer, won in a carnival sometime before she’d arrived at the castle. She’d brought it here with her and the creature seemed now to view her as its surrogate mother. Whenever she was inclined to let it out of the cage, the bird would alight upon her, like some saint that was beloved by the creatures of the world, the bird would flitter and flutter about Isolde in a way that was remarkable to witness.

  ‘We cannot stay here, lord,’ came a voice from behind Sigourd, who turned to see Cal standing in the choking darkness of the doorway. The old rogue stepped inside the room and closed the door, looking about the place at the obvious struggle that had taken place there, ‘we must think of your safety, lord.’