In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  Who had brought him here?

  Sigourd tried to sit up, and it was only then that the pain lanced through him. His whole body ached. His limbs, his muscles, his very bones felt as if they were composed entirely of raw nerve endings. But most of all his face was a concerto of conflicting agonies. It felt wrong too. Sigourd traced his fingers along the contours of his features oh so gently. Half his face felt like it had been dipped in hot wax, which had run and dripped before cooling to set upon him.

  He heard voices from nearby. People talking quietly, out of sight beyond the wall of the lean to.

  Sigourd struggled to his feet, pushing through the pain in his limbs through sheer force of will. While he was laid out there on the floor of the forest he was vulnerable. He needed to get upright, to find out where he was and what had happened to--

  --a glittering flash. As of firelight glinting in the polished surface of a cold blade--

  Sigourd was still for many moments, hunched over with one hand pressed against the trunk of the tree under which he sheltered so that he would not fall, he stood immobile as the memories came rushing back to him. The blazing village, the wulfen braying in terror as they wee slaughtered at the hands of soldiers from his own household. His uncle’s butcher, Huron, their swords flashing in the firelight. The blazing ruin of one of the mighty red trees crashing through the foliage toward him as he lay trapped. Had Sigourd dreamed all that too? He wasn’t sure of anything.

  The voices again, carried softly to him on the slight breeze, brought Sigourd out of his reverie.

  He limped out from under cover of the lean to, holding onto the branches thereabouts for support. It appeared he was deep in the heart of the forest. He was surrounded by endless rows of trees, the canopy here so dense that the bright sunlight was only permitted the most meager of access, shafting down through the trees in fantastic spears of light that fell here and there about the place. On the distant horizon, knifing into the clear blue sky, the snow capped Ash’harad.

  They appeared much further off then when last he had seen them. Evidently he had been transported some distance while unconscious.

  Two people sat nearby, huddled over a small fire that gave off feeble whisps of blue smoke as damp wood burned upon it.

  Sensing movement ahead of him, Jonn Grumble looked up from his place before the fire. Seeing Sigourd he was quiet for a moment before a broad grin split his grubby, bearded face.

  Isolde turned suddenly to see what had taken Jonn Grumble’s attention from their quiet conversation. She inhaled sharply when she saw what the wild man had, surprised and overjoyed to see Sigourd standing before them.

  She jumped up from her place by the small fire and rushed to him, taking Sigourd carefully in her arms she held his gaze for a long moment, searching perhaps for some hidden truth there. Finally she leaned in and kissed Sigourd tenderly upon the lips, holding him in her loving embrace for many moments more.

  The trio sat around the small fire, its meagre warmth giving off little in the way of actual comfort. It was perhaps more of a focal point for their conversation. A means of drawing their collective experience together under the umbrella of a shared concern. Their fears of what horrors would unfold next in this gruesome tale. The wulfen had been scattered or slaughtered. Arook was dead, and Bael had escaped into the forest.

  Really, the conversation was taking place between Isolde and Jonn Grumble. They threw back and forth the facts of their situation, hypothesizing based on the available information, and speculating about the things they didn’t know or weren’t so sure of. Sigourd had said little since his awakening, preferring to keep his own counsel for the time being.

  Both Isolde and Jonn believed that another massacre was around the corner. But they weren’t sure from which side or when it would come. Jonn Grumble felt certain that The Baron was hell bent on prosecuting a war, on driving his forces into the belly of the Eastern Fringes to root out and exterminate the other wulfen tribes scattered about that cursed land.

  Isolde believed that Bael was intent on waging a war of his own. A guerrilla conflict in which he and any of his surviving bandits would descend from the mountains to lay waste and to slaughter the human settlements near the border. They had no idea how close they were to the truth.

  Isolde and Jonn had dug for the better part of a day to pull Sigourd out of the blackened debris. When they’d finally found him he was half dead and half burned.

  They’d fled into the deeper forests, careful to cover their tracks in case of pursuit by one party or another. There they’d had lain low for near two weeks, and Sigourd had lain unconscious that entire time. With his wulfen physiology working hard to heal the horrific burns he’d sustained, he’d healed up as well as could be expected. But the scars would never fully fade. The left side of his face was riven with fused tissue that had been too badly damaged for even his post human anatomy to restore to its original vitality.

  All trace of the beautiful boy that had left Corrinth Vardis on a quest of unyielding love had vanished. In his place was an altogether more stoic individual.

  Isolde and Jonn Grumble both had noted quietly to themselves how something had changed in Sigourd. Not just in the physical sense. But something deeper. As if on a level hidden within the chambers of his heart some of his youthful vitality had been replaced with a core of cool volcanic rock. He was simultaneously both more and less than he had been before arriving in the Ash’harad. But the Eastern Fringes had a habit of doing that to men. Breaking apart their souls and leaving ought but fragments to be scattered to the four winds, or else remaking them into something the All-mother never intended.

  Sigourd sat between Jonn Grumble and Isolde, quiet in the fashion of his new sensibilities. For some forty minutes while the others had talked he had stared into the flickering flames of the timid fire before them, polishing with a piece of napped leather the ornate vambrace affixed to his forearm. The delicate filigree and polished stones set into that vambrace seemed to dance with a light of their own. The device had not left Sigourd’s person once since it had been gifted to him.

  When he had finally voiced an opinion on the subject of what would happen next, of what their chosen course of action should be, he spoke with such quiet authority that the others hadn’t for one instant thought to question his evaluation of the situation.

  ‘Bael wishes to make a statement large enough to draw the other tribes to his banner,’ said Sigourd. ‘He won’t waste time on the massacre of small settlements along the borders. He will head west, to Corrinth Vardis. There he intends to murder my family. He will force humanity into a conflict that he has no hope of winning. The spark that ignites his doomed revolution.’

  ‘He’d have to be suicidal to attempt a direct assault on the palace,’ said Jonn Grumble. ‘That place is harder to get into than a nun’s knickers!’

  Isolde looked up as the import of Sigourd’s words took her, ‘In two nights time, when the moon is full, Bael and whatever forces he has assembled will be able to effect The Change. En masse they will be a force to be reckoned with even for a fortified palace. Bael is no fool, he won’t attack directly, at least not unless he believes the advantage is his.’

  ‘Well he’s got nearly two weeks head start on us,’ offered Jonn. ‘Now we know where he’s going how are we going to find a way of getting there ahead of him. I’ll be dammed if I know any way of crossing those cursed mountains faster than how we came over ‘em.’

  Sigourd looked up from the flickering fire before him, casting his eyes into the shadowed darkness of the forest beyond their small camp, ‘I know,’ he said.

  Veronique hadn’t slept well since the night her son had disappeared. In fact, her sleepless nights had started before even then. When the stranger had appeared in her chambers to confront her and her brother. To warn them of his intention to lure Sigourd away.

  ‘Stranger’ was a questionable term to use in reference to that man. He wasn’t really a stranger at all. She’d met him
once before, and she’d known well enough what he wanted the moment she’d seen him at court all these long years hence.

  She had sensed his inhumanity even from across the crowded throne room, and when he’d stood before her and The Baron on the night of the fire moments before half the palace had been leveled, she’d known for certain what horrors lay coiled beneath the surface of his human guise.

  His face came to her now, floating into her unconscious mind along with the faces of Sigourd and....one other. She had tried to forget that last face, couldn’t even bring herself to say his name. She had tried to push it out of her memory for almost twenty years. But it had stayed lodged in her heart like a thorn. Every time she looked at her son she saw him, and the thorn had worked itself a little deeper.

  Those floating faces brought with them pain, the kind of pain that constricts the lungs, that makes it difficult to breathe. The sort of pain that crushes the joy out of a person not immediately, but over the course of years, decades. Slowly, agonizingly.

  Veronique awoke with a start, her heart pounding in her breast as she cast about her darkened chamber in a moment of panic. She was convinced that someone was in here with her. Someone was watching her from the shadowed depths of the large room. Strange shapes loomed out of the darkness before, silent and watchful. Her eyes, wide with fear, began slowly to grow accustomed to the surrounding gloom.

  It was several terrifying moments before Veronique realized was alone after all. The looming shapes were only her gowns and other fabrics draped over the tall furniture. She allowed her breath to escape in a relieved whisper.

  As Veronique began to regain some measure of composure there came a noise from the corner of the room. Suddenly her heart was hammering again. Something moved behind the curtains of the tall window above the desk where Veronique would sit as hand maidens combed or braided her hair. A gentle breeze billowed the curtains very slightly as Veronique stared into the gloom, and something rolled across the desk.

  Of course it had been overly warm in her room the previous night. She’d left the window ajar to allow a small breath of air into the chamber. Now something had gained access through that window, and was waiting for her on the other side of the heavy velvet drapery.

  The moments ticked by, the object on the desk rolled again in the wake of another gentle gust. It rolled right off the edge of the desk and fell quietly to the floor.

  The thing behind the curtain moved suddenly, and Veronique had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

  There was a quick, mad flurry from behind the curtain, as of wings thrashing the fabric, and a sound like some great bird taking flight from the window’s ledge. Then all was quiet once more.

  Veronique slowly lowered her hand, deciding that such timid behavior was unbecoming of a lady of her position. She steeled herself enough to climb from her bed and padded bare foot over to the window. The stone floor was cold against the soles of her feet.

  Tentatively, she reached out to take hold of the velvet. She breathed deeply to steady her nerves before ripping the fabric aside to reveal...nothing.

  Stepping back from the window, Veronique bent down to retrieve the object that had rolled from the desk onto the floor. A small scrap of rolled parchment, held in place with a single brass band. It was the type of communique used by those who employed birds to deliver their messages. The palace had a flock of its own at the disposal of those senior enough to benefit form their convenience.

  Delicately sliding off the brass band, Veronique unraveled the small parchment and began to read.

  CHAPTER 19

  The journey back...

  The stone skipped across the lake, two, three, four times, ruining its perfect stillness with concentric circles of ripples that radiated out and away from each place it touched the darkly glowing water. The fifth time the stone touched the lake it disappeared beneath the surface, leaving behind ought but more of the expanding ripples.

  Jonn bent low to retrieve another of the polished stones from the rocky shore of the atoll, lest the one he cast was insufficient unto the task.

  Sigourd and Jonn Grumble had led Isolde up into the heart of the Ash’harad, following the trail the two had taken after they’d emerged from Brodus Klay’s mountain fastness to descend into the Eastern Fringes proper.

  They had negotiated their way carefully back up to that sorrowful place over the course of four days, and now found themselves once again standing in the shadow of the ruined skull keep, and bathed in the eerie radiance of the dark lake.

  Isolde had scowled and cursed in the strange tongue of her people when Sigourd had informed them of his intent to return to Brodus Klay’s lair. She knew only too well of the wandering guardian cum sorcerer. For two decades Klay had harried the people of her tribe. A constant thorn in their sides, never dangerous enough to bring ruin upon her people in his own right, but mad enough to think he could.

  However, it wasn’t Brodus Klay that Sigourd was directly interested in. His plan was to cajole or coerce the boatman into providing them with a means to negotiate the River Woe.

  ‘You really think this’ll work?’ asked Jonn Grumble.

  ‘Bael would have been forced to go over the mountains. This route will allow us to pass through them,’ said Sigourd.

  ‘Sigourd is right,’ offered Isolde, ‘this will allow us to shave ten or more days of travel off our return journey.’

  Sigourd had reasoned that the lake must be a tributary of the great river, and that they would be able to join the Woe and traverse its lethal currents to get ahead or at least catch up to Bael.

  So here they stood, waiting in the eerie twilight of the mountain lake for the boatman.

  In all truth, Sigourd was not even sure how he would begin to try to convince the boatman of the urgency of their needs if he were to refuse their request. Or even if the boatman would still be there to ferry them down the river. In cutting the morose boatman’s chains Sigourd may have severed the link to his only chance of heading off Bael.

  He had considered taking the boat by force, but who knew where such a course of action might lead them.

  Minutes dragged on and still there was no sign of the dragon vessel or its mysterious pilot. Tutting to himself, Jonn drew back his arm, about to cast the second stone into the lake when Sigourd gripped his arm and bade him be still.

  Across the lake, where mists had settled upon the quiet surface like smoke from a burning field, something stirred. The trio tensed in anticipation, and as they looked on the mists began to swirl as a shape pushed through them.

  The snarling head of some huge reptilian emerged slowly from the depthless shadows, its fanged maw locked permanently in a grimace of beastly menace. Following, there came that long neck that curved downwards into the prow of a small sailing vessel, and beyond that the body of the boat proper, flanked by carved wings of the most intricate design which swept back and up in a great flourish just as they had the first time Sigourd had lain eyes on the magnificent carvings.

  The Dragon Boat.

  The vessel drifted beyond the reach of tendrils of mist and fine vapor that struggled to cling on, shedding those as it moved with stately grace towards the shore where Sigourd and the others now stood.

  ‘I don’t see him...’ said Jonn Grumble, craning his neck so that he might get a better look into the boat. Sure enough, of the boatman there was no sign. In cutting his chains, Sigourd had freed the pilot of the magnificent vessel to leave behind the somber confines of the mountain lake and go who knew where.

  But perhaps he had foreseen Sigourd’s need, and by way of thanks had gifted him the dragon boat in his absence, for here it was even without its pilot. Surely a blessing beyond that of mere good fortune.

  There was a soft crunch as the boat ploughed into the silt of the shore, coming to rest not three feet from Sigourd. The trio looked at the boat before sharing a weary glance between themselves.

  ‘I guess he’s off enjoying the life of a free man
,’ said Jonn Grumble in reference to the absent boatman. After a moments hesitation, Sigourd splashed into the shallows to take hold of the boat and pull himself in, followed by Isolde and Jonn Grumble who threw their packs into the vessel before clambering aboard themselves.

  Sigourd took a moment to familiarize himself with the boats layout, which seemed standard enough. A platform in the aft of the vessel provided for the pilot of the craft, and a single long oar connected to the sweeping tail to act as both locomotion and rudder, plunged into the dark waters.

  The group settled themselves. Isolde at the front, Jonn Grumble sitting in the middle, and Sigourd to the aft serving as boatman.

  He pushed off from the shallows with a great shove of the long oar. In an instant, the boat was adrift once more upon the calm surface of the lake.

  ‘I hate to bring this up now,’ said Jonn Grumble, ‘but didn’t that treacherous old git who led us here say something about no man who attempted to navigate these waters ever survived?’

  ‘Aye, that he did,’ replied Sigourd, ‘but as we’ve already seen I’m no man!’ he said with a wink and a thin smile.

  ‘That’s a comfort...’ said Jonn Grumble, with a worried look on his face.

  Sigourd allowed himself a moment to stand quietly with the oar in his hands. He quieted his mind so that he might feel the solid oak of the haft against his palms, the weight of the craft under him, the subtle pull of the hidden currents beneath the silken surface of the water. He allowed the boat to be drawn by the tug of the waters. Those currents would lead him to the opening which fed into the River Woe as surely as water spirals down through a sink hole.

  He needed only to ensure that the boat stayed true to the pull of the waters, and before long they would find themselves being sucked into the raging might of the great river.

  A strange sensation came over Sigourd then. A feeling not unlike many of his experiences of late. His senses seemed heightened beyond the norm, to the point where he could feel in the very fibre of his being the vibrational thrum of the waters resonating up through the hull of the Dragon Boat. He could fee the energetic pull of the waters almost as if he were swimming through them. He could sense the thrum of life within the boat itself, a pulsing, rhythmic beat not unlike that of a living heart. Sigourd was struck by this last sensation most powerfully of all. It almost seemed as if there were someone else in the craft with them. The boatman perhaps?