In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  ‘I’m sorry Sigourd,’ she said, ‘but I needed to show you exactly what is at stake.’

  The vision had been so mind shatteringly real. For several moments after Sigourd had returned to the shore of the lake, he was unable to speak as his young mind struggled to process the colossal play of events it had witnessed.

  Isolde said nothing further, allowing Sigourd the time he needed to recover himself. She was content to sit beside him, her arm wrapped within his. They sat before the glittering water like lovers enjoying the sunshine on a beautiful, carefree morning.

  It was many moments before Sigourd was able to finally look up at her. When he did, there was the faintest shimmer of tears in his eyes.

  ‘That is the fate we all face if the two tribes are not brought together in peaceful co-existence,’ said Isolde. ‘But you will deliver us from that Sigourd. That is the prophecy, that is why Arook has brought you to us.’

  ‘H-how can I possibly--’ Sigourd stammered.

  ‘Because that is what you were placed in this life to do, Sigourd.’

  He looked up and across the lake once more. The children were still there. Splashing each other and laughing without a care in the world.

  As darkness fell, Isolde led Sigourd through the village to a great domed pod near the centre of the village. From within, there came the din of great noise, as of many people dancing and laughing. Celebrating with the fervor of a people who have been recently freed from the burden of some great fear.

  The pair walked hand in hand, and upon entering the large chamber, Sigourd was indeed surprised to see what appeared to be the entire community, some two hundred souls, gathered there. They danced and laughed and drank and dined as stringed and fluted instruments wielded by virtuoso players chimed and whinnied in an undeniably invigorating fashion.

  Upon seeing the pair entering the chamber, Sigourd could feel the eyes of the celebrants falling upon him. There was expectation there, behind their curious glances. The merriment did not stop, but Sigourd could feel that they had been waiting for him.

  From the centre of the crowd, Arook emerged and crossed to greet them.

  ‘You are well Sigourd?’ he asked.

  ‘I have composed myself since Isolde shared with me the...the vision.’

  Arook nodded, seemingly satisfied with this, ‘It is a most powerful experience. One that can be quite overwhelming.’

  ‘I can attest to that,’ said Sigourd.

  ‘What is your decision? continued Arook. ‘Will you stay here with us and fulfill the life potential you were always destined to?’

  Sigourd was quiet for a moment, considering, ‘What choice do I have? After what I have seen, there can only ever be one answer to your question.’

  Arook looked down at Sigourd, who thought he saw a momentary shadow of pity pass over the craggy features of the large man. There and gone in an instant.

  ‘There is always a choice,’ Arook said. ‘But in this instance you are correct after a fashion. There is only one decision that a man of your character could ever make.’

  Sigourd looked about at the assembled community, a measure of disbelief entering his tone as he spoke, ‘Why do they celebrate?’

  ‘They celebrate because you have returned to us Sigourd,’ said Isolde.

  ‘How can they express such joy when they know what awaits them? What awaits all of us.’

  ‘Because they may now live in hope that their futures are not written in blood,’ said Arook.

  ‘Why the deception?’ asked Sigourd, ‘why did you not just come to me and explain?’

  ‘Would you have listened?’ asked Arook. ‘Would you or a member of your family not have had our messengers delivered to your dungeons for bringing such shocking truths to you? We needed to draw you away from the influence of those around you to a place where we could illuminate you fully, without fear of reprisal.’

  Sigourd nodded in understanding, his dark expression lightening a touch.

  Isolde gently pulled at Sigourd’s hand, ‘Come Sigourd, come meet your people properly.’

  She led him then into the thronging crowd, leaving Arook looking on smiling after the young pair. Perhaps, he mused, he would allow himself the luxury of this small joy. To believe that truly, their fates might not be sealed.

  Movement from the far side of the great chamber caught Arook’s attention. Over by the entranceway, which was draped in the ubiquitous shimmering gauze, stood Bael and a group of his men. The young wulfen was wearing his usual mask of sneering contempt, save for this time it was even more rigidly set upon his face, as if he were attempting to direct all of his malice in one particular direction. Arook followed his son’s eye line to where Sigourd and Isolde stood talking with other members of the community.

  The intensity of Bael’s enmity was startling to Arook, and he realized for the first time that he had not fully grasped up until this moment how deep the ill feeling ran.

  Arook had tried so hard to make Bael see the truth of his aim’s. How they would benefit the race of the wulfen. How Sigourd’s presence here and his eventual ascension to leadership was a necessary part of the survival of the species.

  But Bael was too much a slave to his own ideas. Too bound up in his own fevered hatred of mankind for the persecution of their people, and most dangerously of all, a firm belief in the rightness of that hatred.

  Bael had made it clear from the start that he viewed Sigourd as little more than another human who would seek only to control or destroy the wulfen. His stance was simple; the wulfen would be better off taking the fight to humanity. Survival of the fittest. It had always been his most pronounced quality, that of an aggrieved soul. Even as a boy he had fostered that dark canker in his heart, allowed it to define him as a man.

  That father and son could not reach an agreement had saddened Arook more than he would care to admit. But the needs of the many were paramount, and he would not be swayed from his course by discord sowed by any man, even his own son.

  Arook’s reverie was broken by the sensation that he himself was being watched, and he looked up to see that Bael was studying him from his shadowed position across the chamber.

  The malice in his son’s face was almost gone, and although he could see that Bael was striving to maintain a neutral countenance, Arook could see clearly enough the embers of resentment softly glowing behind the younger man’s eyes.

  Father and son stood for several moments, some quiet communion passing between them across the great distance and noise of the chamber.

  Finally Bael, his face hardening once more into a mask of bitter malice, turned and swept from the chamber, his men trailing in his wake.

  Arook could not shake the feeling that the next time he saw his son it would be the last.

  CHAPTER 17

  The greater good...

  The strange orbs that hung from the trees and the insides of the pods which served to illuminate the darkness had long since grown dim. The noise and carousing of the wulfen had similarly died down, the celebrants returning gradually to their beds until now all was quiet and dark. Not a soul stirred inside the great domed expanse of the central pod. Save one.

  By the dim light of the low hung orbs, Sigourd traced his way along the curving walls. He studied with intense fascination frescoes and wall paintings that adorned the inner surface thereabouts.

  The artwork provided a snapshot of the long and troubled history of the wulfen. Most of it was indecipherable to Sigourd, appearing to be a collection of images either too faded with the course of time or too convoluted for their meaning to register with him.

  Yet still they fascinated him. Sigourd had noticed them during the course of the festivities, but had been too preoccupied meeting the wulfen to enquire as to what they were.

  The night had seemed to go on for hours. Virtually every person in the chamber had at some point approached Sigourd with a few words of gratitude or encouragement, greeting him touching their forehead to his own for the briefest o
f moments in a gesture of mutual understanding, of communion.

  It had been quite exhausting, but now that the evening had reached a conclusion Sigourd had taken the opportunity to walk alone amongst the shadows of this ancient place. To gain further insight into a people he was barely beginning to know.

  Lightly he brushed his fingers over the raised workings of the art, perhaps in the hope that a physical connection might allow him some better understanding of the abstract offerings.

  ‘It is the sad history of our people...’

  The voice, cold and aloof, with an edge running through it like an assassins blade, came from behind Sigourd. He turned suddenly to see a figure looming behind him in the weak light of the softly glowing orbs. The shadow stepped forward, revealing a face that was uncannily like that of Arook. Sigourd recognized him as the man who had stood in the doorway while Isolde had mopped his brow the morning after he had woken from The Change. What was it Arook had called him? Bael. That was his name.

  Although this Bael shared a certain physical similarity with Arook, he was perhaps twenty five or thirty years younger, around Sigourd’s own age. His face possessed not an ounce of the noble compassion that Sigourd had seen in Arook. Instead there was a flavor of cruelty to the sharp angles of his face, and even though he had stepped into the light, there seemed to be a perpetual shadow that fell across his eyes, reducing them to pinpricks of light that regarded Sigourd like a snake might consider its prey.

  ‘We were hunted almost to extinction by those who would see the wulfen wiped from the pages of history,’ continued the man.

  ‘Before I came here, I’d always heard the stories of the wulfen,’ said Sigourd. ‘The wolves who walked as men. I’d believed them to be just that, tall tales,’ said Sigourd.

  Bael smiled ruefully, that malicious twinkle never left his eye, ‘We’ve spent so long hiding in the shadows that for many we’ve passed into myth. An ignoble existence for a people that once walked the earth as its rulers.’

  A heavy silence hung in the air while this newcomer seemed to assess Sigourd, who for his own part, was content to let the silence hang. There was an amused sneer turning up the corners of his mouth that Sigourd found most disagreeable,

  ‘I am Bael,’ said the other man finally, ‘I believe that you and I are what you might call, what is it in your tongue? Cousins?’

  ‘My father Arook, and your father, your true blood sire mind, were brothers. This I’m sure you’ve already been made aware of.’

  ‘Arook has told me some details,’ said Sigourd.

  ‘Has he now?’ that damnable sneer flashing across Bael’s face once more, ‘I imagine it must be a terrible burden to bear. The weight of all the world on such young shoulders. How are you bearing up cousin?’

  ‘I have much to consider,’ offered Sigourd, not wanting to be drawn into a debate on the subject with a person who clearly bore him no good will.

  There was something else too. A certain familiarity that Sigourd recognized in the tone of Bael’s voice, his very manner even. Sigourd had the unmistakable feeling of having met him somewhere before arriving in the village of the wulfen.

  ‘Did my father tell you exactly how your parents met?’ continued Bael. ‘He can be infuriatingly selective with the details.’

  Sigourd could sense that he was being baited, knew that for whatever the reason this Bael was trying to goad him

  ‘If you’ve something to say, then say it,’ said Sigourd.

  ‘Ah, I see that he did not tell you everything,’ said Bael, his sneer creeping wider all the time.

  Sigourd could feel his blood begin to boil at the sly, mocking manner in the other man’s tone. But his schooling under the sword masters of Corrinth Vardis had included more than lessons in fancy footwork and proper positioning for thrust and counter thrust.

  Cal had reminded him that every battle was fought and won in the mind before swords were ever unsheathed. Adversaries of skill would take their time, probing and posturing, trying to get a feel for what their opponent was capable of. What his training was, how strong and how quick his mental faculties were, how truly lethal were the skills he possessed, if any.

  Sigourd knew now that this was exactly the game Bael was playing.

  ‘How is it you think that the warrior king of a tribe of half-wolves came to lie in the bed of human royalty?’ Bael continued. ‘Did you assume they met at a summer dance and he wooed her with promises of his undying affections and secret titilations?’

  He let the question hang in the air, allowing Sigourd a moment to ponder the answer before he delivered his coup de grace.

  ‘He raped her, dear cousin. He stole into her bedchamber and took what pleased him, which happened to be her virtue, and on that very night you were conceived Sigourd Fellhammer.’

  Sigourd struggled valiantly to retain his composure, it took every ounce of self control, all of his training, to refrain from taking his fist and breaking the sneering face. Was this another attempt at unmanning him, all part of the game Bael was playing? Or was this yet the latest cruel revelation in a series that had rocked Sigourd to his very core.

  ‘Only the All-mother knows where he first laid eyes on her,’ continued Bael. ‘Perhaps he caught a glimpse of her lilly white skin as she bathed in a stream. You know these fancy court harlots are inclined to such lewd behaviours. Nevertheless, he saw something he wanted and took what pleased him. I do often wonder if it pleased her, to be ravaged at the hands of one of us. It certainly didn’t please your uncle, The Baron. When he caught your father he had him strung up and flayed for the indiscretion. And so began the systematic purging of all known wulfen communities in the land of Atos and beyond. We were forced to flee, as we always have done. We traveled over the Ash’harad and made our home here in the Eastern Fringes where no human would dare step foot. Entire communities were reduced to less than ash at the command of your uncle, and all because of your father. So preoccupied with taking vile liberties with some human wench that he would bring down unthinkable wrath and slaughter upon his people....and now my father, in his infinite wisdom, would have that man’s bastard step into his place as the leader of our tribe!’

  Sigourdcouls stand it no longer. He lashed out at Bael, made to drive his fist into the other man’s leering face for daring to heap such disrespect upon his mother’s name.

  Moving so quickly he was but a blur, Bael smote Sigourd to the floor of the chamber with a thunderous blow. Dazed, Sigourd struggled to stand. Bael loomed over him, the shadow across his eyes, his leering sneer glinting in the light of the orbs.

  ‘But fear not cousin,’ said Bael, ‘when events here have run their course, I will enact a terrible revenge upon those who have wronged us. Sacrifices will have to be made. The spark to ignite the fire of revolution will be struck here. Do not fear death, it is but a small step--’

  ‘--in the direction of the greater good,’ finished Sigourd, as the realization slammed into him like a blow from a war hammer. ‘It was you. You killed Cal....,’ he breathed in horrified recognition.

  Bael’s only response was to sneer more broadly still, rows of razor sharp teeth splitting his face giving him the aspect of some grinning skull.

  From within his cloak, Bael slowly drew a wicked looking blade that curved to a lethal point. He stalked towards the prone Sigourd, stalked him like the reaper.

  Suddenly, there was a sound like the skies splitting and everything began to shake violently as if the earth itself was heaving to. Bael staggered, and Sigourd was thrown once more to the floor as the thunderous peel continued, followed moments later by another and another.

  Sigourd recognized this for what it was almost instantly. He had already lived through it once before, the same as at the palace in Corrinth Vardis, when the weapons stores had been lit. Someone was using gunpowder on the giant trees of the village, using explosive charges to cleave through the mighty red trees of the wulfen dwelling, shattering their huge trunks like they were the flimsiest t
inder.

  From somewhere close by Sigourd heard screaming, blurred by the thrumming vibration that seemed to radiate through the very air he breathed. When he looked up, Bael had disappeared into the darkness from whence he had come.

  The explosive detonations lit up the silver grey of morning like star bursts. The resultant compression of their detonation shook the surrounding trees and blew the leaves off their branches in great flurries of shredded foliage. The surrounding pods rattled and shook as their attachments sheared and split in the wake of the blasts.

  As for the trees to which the explosives had been attached, their great bulk was splintered as the fuses burned down to the charges and great blooms of destructive energy ripped into them.

  Some of the great trees were only partially crippled by the charges, defying the terrible death that had been cast upon them, refusing to fall. At least initially.

  Other great reds were entirely bisected by the explosions, their mid sections blown to matchwood, they toppled with such majestic grace, bringing down those strange pods attached to them and crashing into yet others as they made their stately and inexorable descent.

  All of it came thundering to the earth like an avalanche. The pods shattered upon impacting the ground like old wooden crates falling heavily from the back of a trader’s wagon, spilling their contents of burning, flailing bodies across the forest floor. Flames and strange gasses blew out of some of the pods, and all around came the sound of thunder as the echoing noise of the explosions found itself trapped inside the valley. Rebounding off the surrounding mountain ranges, that thunder rolled ponderously back toward the village to hang in the air like the booming of angry volcanoes.

  Huron looked upon the destruction wrought by the Baratiis gunpowder smiths. They had stolen into the strange village under cover of darkness and laid the charges while the main body of the assault force had secured positions around the perimeter. They had waited for this, the moment the quiet dawn would be rent by the terrible explosions and the village would be thrown into chaos.