In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  Sigourd turned to look down into the boat to confirm that there was indeed only the three of them present within its carved confines. He saw exactly what he expected to, Isolde and Jonn Grumble sitting before him, and nothing more.

  Isolde noted the distant expression on Sigourd’s face, ‘What troubles you, my love?’

  Sigourd continued to stare into the boat for a moment longer before shaking his head and returning his attention to the water, where he embraced once more the ethereal submersion of the lake.

  The faint moon hung high in a sky awash with blooms of pinks and oranges over the distant horizon, darkening through several shades of deep purples and blues as ones vision climbed toward the heavens.

  The woodlands that overlooked the city of Corrinth Vardis and the resplendent palace within its walls were quiet now. As day turned steadily to dusk there was a serenity about the place that was unusually profound. The indigenous wild population, usually still markedly vocal even at this late hour, were silent. It was as if the creatures of the forest were holding their breaths, or perhaps had hidden themselves away for fear of being discovered by creatures that were not native to these woods at all. The stillness was too perfect. It was as unnatural to the woodlands as those beings who now penetrated its borders.

  From the long shadows that crept throughout the wood, cast in the fading light of the day, something stirred, and that perfect stillness was broken.

  Carefully, Bael lifted his head from cover so that he might better see the twinkling city spread out below the low foothills he was hidden atop. One by one, the members of his murder party emerged stealthily from the cover of the dense woods. Nearly five hundred wulfen had joined Bael. Consisting of the survivors of the massacre of his own village, and wulfen drawn from other tribes who had eagerly awaited the call to war.

  Daubed in ceremonial face paint of white ash paste to illustrate their willingness to sacrifice their lives, they hunkered low in the shade and shadow of great trees and thick foliage, careful not to give away their presence to those who would defend the city.

  After two weeks hard march, through mountain passes and over frozen wastes, always careful to avoid human settlements and laying low whenever the soldierly orders of the lands of Atos came near, Bael and his forces had finally arrived at their intended target. Now they stood before the city where the first hammer blow would be struck. They stood on the precipice of history ready to strike the spark that would ignite the revolution.

  Bael intended to raze the city to the ground, to tear out the throat, in a very real sense, of the ruling elite and leave the masses in disarray. He needed only await the rising of the full moon so that his forces might effect The Change, and initiate their attack.

  He looked to the darkening sky, where that faint moon sat in slow ascendence. Bael gestured once to Nartaba, who crouched close by. Nartaba pulled himself up, and raised an arm to the assembled forces waiting at the wood’s edge, showing them his clenched fist. The message was clear to the gathered wulfen. The attack would come soon, but not yet. Silently the massed ranks of Bael’s murder party sank back into the shadows to disappear from sight.

  Bael looked again to the unsuspecting city twinkling on the flatlands below him. It was only a matter of hours now.

  Mortaron was in a gleeful mood. His careful designs, laid out over the course of decades were finally coming to fruition. He had never been one to show much interest in the Gods, or ascribe much credence in their designs. But he had to admit that he had been very fortunate in the recent play of events.

  The Baron was on the way back to his private sanctum within the palace, allowing himself a rare opportunity to savor his imminent success. He arrived at the doors to his sanctum, pushing them open he was surprised to see that his chambers were not empty.

  Standing there behind the ornate desk where Mortaron would sit and orchestrate his grand designs, was the Lady Veronique. She looked up as Mortaron entered, holding in her hands parchments and manuscripts. It was clear from her expression that she had not enjoyed reading through her brother’s personal documents.

  Mortaron’s eyes narrowed at the sight of his sister, but he was careful not to allow his expression the opportunity to betray the depth of his concern.

  ‘It was you!’ hissed Veronique through clenched teeth, ‘it was always you.’

  Mortaron moved into the chamber, where the setting sun cast its ochre glow across the room, lending sombre depth to the patchwork of long shadows that lay heavily across the floor and the furniture.

  The Baron affected a disdainful air, not even bothering to look at his sister as he took off his long cloak to cast it across a delicately carved rack near the door, ‘You have some business here?’ he asked her.

  ‘I received a warning brother. A warning that my husband and his army is riding into more danger than they could possibly know. The Morays have already crossed the border and are waiting for him. The Regent is riding into a trap. A trap set by you!’ said the lady.

  Mortaron smiled thinly, although there was little amusement in his dark eyes, ‘You’re drinking again are you, sister?’

  Veronique moved around the desk so that she could stand before her brother, a sheaf of papers still clutched in her hand. Her voice was tremulous as she spoke, but her eyes blazed with a righteous anger, ‘I could scarcely believe the warning myself when it came. So I went looking for proof,’ Veronique thrust out the sheaf of papers before her, ‘and here it is!’ she said.

  Mortaron didn’t even glance at the papers in his sister’s hand.

  ‘And what would those be? Letters of confession, written by me in some mad delfictional hilt for these fictional crimes?’

  ‘Letters confirming orders to the garrison commander at Daros to re-deploy his forces fifty miles south. Your orders!’

  Veronique’s voice had risen steadily above mere talking now, and she berated her brother, ‘My husband is counting on those reinforcements. They are a vital part of any victory he will achieve and you have deprived him of them. And don’t for an instant try to insult me by citing coincidence as the sole cause of this happenstance. I know you too well, Vincenzo.’

  Mortaron stepped toward his sister. He made no obvious threat of it, but his inclination was clear enough to one who had grown up beside him. Veronique recoiled, suddenly very aware that she was alone with a man she knew only too capable of committing the most heinous of acts.

  ‘You were always so damned inquisitive weren’t you sister...’ said The Baron, still wearing that thin, humorless smile upon his lips. ‘Even as a child it was all our parents could do to keep you out of trouble. Out of the places you had no business going.’

  ‘What other horrors have you committed in the name of your treachery?’ asked Veronique, her breath catching in her throat as she realized that her brother had indeed condemned The Regent to death.

  ‘I have done what I must to ensure that my designs are realized. You can assure yourself of that,’ said The Baron with a self satisfied smirk upon his face.

  ‘The explosion of the gunpowder store, was that one of your designs too!?’ Veronique was seething now, despite the fear she held for her brother.

  ‘All a very necessary part of convincing out dear Regent that he must take up arms against the Morays,’ cowed Mortaron.Veronique found herself suddenly very short of breath. The depth of her own brother’s betrayal was staggering.

  The Baron stepped closer as he continued, ‘The Morays had plotted the destruction of the gunpowder stores for some time. I saw an opportunity and merely allowed it to happen. A simple matter of re-directing our intelligence and giving our spies reasons to look in other places. A simple matter of leaving the proverbial back door open, as it were.’

  Veronique was aghast at this revelation, ‘Why have you done this?’ she breathed.

  ‘Power. Control. All the things your fool husband takes for granted, but doesn’t have the stomach to wield effectively. Although, that is an issue very shortly to
be resolved,’ said The Baron, a cold relish running through the timbre of his voice like a vein of glacial ice.

  ‘You won’t live to enjoy the fruits of your labors,’ said Veronique. ‘Ill make sure that word reaches The Regent. When he and Sigourd return they will ensure that you receive ample enough punishment to fit your crimes!’

  The door to the chambers creaked loudly as they were swung open suddenly. Veronique looked up to see who it might be that had interrupted the siblings discourse. The Baron, still smiling, did not himself turn, for he fully expected the arrival of the person who at this moment now strode into the room behind him.

  Heavy boot falls echoed dully inside the chamber as the nightmare knight Huron came to stand at his Barons’ shoulder. The knight was fresh from his travels. His armor scorched and dented in places, his boots and cloak caked with mud and blood and filth.

  The Barons cruel gaze never left his sister as he spoke again, ‘Ah yes, my nephew, the love sick puppy. I expect to hear all about him presently.’ He inclined his head toward Huron. ‘Tell us knight, what news have you of the heir to the throne of Corrinth Vardis?’

  Huron’s voice was a basso rumble as he spoke, ‘I tracked the lord Sigourd as far as the Eastern Fringes to a place where a band of settlers had made their home. The Baratiis and I engaged and destroyed the encampment as ordered.’

  Mortaron’s dark eyes glittered maliciously as they played over Veronique, ‘...and the boy?’ he asked. Huron’s flinty gaze flickered momentarily toward Veronique, some hesitation stayed his hand.

  ‘Speak damn you!’ roared The Baron.

  ‘There was a battle, a fire...’ Huron swallowed hard, his eyes flickering once more in the direction of the Lady Veronique.

  ‘The Prince Regent is dead,’ stated the knight flatly, in a way that implied he’d had to force the words from his mouth, and had made an effort to strip those words of any emotional inflection lest they give his true feelings away.

  Veronique’s mouth fell open, and for a long moment she struggled to comprehend what she’d just heard. She seemed to have trouble drawing breath before finally she fell to the floor, clutching at her breast. When Veronique looked up again, her eyes were red with tears and filled with hate.

  ‘You murdered him!’ she screamed at her brother. ‘You sent your butcher to find my son and now he’s dead!’

  The Baron did not speak immediately. He was content for the moment to merely watch his sister impassively as she wailed on the floor before him. His dark eyes regarding her emotional breakdown with cold detachment.

  In the eyes of the knight Huron, there was something more like sorrow as he watched with mounting discomfort the agonies of the woman he loved.

  All around the dragon boat the raging waters of the River Woe surged, tossing the small craft like flotsam. It was all the trio within the shell of the boat could do to hang on for dear life as they careened down the river at break-neck speed.

  At first Jonn Grumble had been relieved to be rid of the darkness of the enclosed mountainside. He had breathed deeply of the fresh air and smiled with relief at being set free from the bowels of the Ash’harad. But all too quickly his relief had turned to mortal dread as it began to dawn on him the scope of their near suicidal undertaking.

  They were soaked through and the boat itself was half full of water as each time they crashed through another surging current the waters would break fiercely upon the dragon. The intensity of the experience had nevertheless inured them to the bitter chill that worked itself upon their bones.

  Jonn Grumble and Isolde clung as rigidly as they might to the benches upon which they sat, while Sigourd gripped the haft of the oar between knuckles as white as snow. He wore an expression of intense concentration, and although the others could not see it, Sigourd was hardly with them in that boat.

  He was at a crossroads between worlds, where the physical and ethereal conjoin beyond the ken of mortal man. Sigourd was hearing the voice of the All-mother, he could see the notes of her sacred song being played out before him in the surging of the river and the crashing crescendo of the raging waters. He was navigating between those notes, searching for pockets of safety amongst the brutal, destructive clamor of the great song.

  The dragon boat had been on the river for almost two hours since leaving the confines of the mountain, and Sigourd’s own muscles sang with a blissful agony of their own as he struggled with all his might against the pull of the single oar, fighting desperately to keep the boat’s course true.

  As they sped ever onwards down the great river, there came a sound that dwarfed all others. It came to Isolde and Jonn Grumble as a great thundering, crashing. As of an avalanche that would not end. To Sigourd, it registered as a discordant symphony that flared so brightly it appeared as if a star had fallen out of the heavens. All three looked up to sight what it was that had appeared so suddenly in their path. Sigourd could not help but whisper a silent payer to the old gods when he realized what peril it was they now faced.

  ‘I’m hoping that what I’m seeing up ahead is just a horrible trick of my imagination,’ said Jonn Grumble, his mouth falling open as a new terror took hold of his heart.

  ‘You’re not imagining wild man...’ said Isolde, the fear in her own voice barely audible above the great booming that thundered around them, ‘...that is The Hammer Of The Gods.’

  The waterfalls marked the extent of the mountain ranges, beyond them the River Woe passed on into the flatlands of the known territories, running all the way to the heart of Sigourd’s father’s realm.

  When Sigourd and Jonn Grumble had first laid eyes upon those falls from the safety of the distant mountain passes some weeks previously, they had been inspiring enough to take away the breath of the two adventurers. Now, as the dragon boat raced into the heart of those same falls, Sigourd considered the sight was epic enough to break a man’s spirit. Their sound was akin to the sound of the eruption that shook the palace at Corrinth Vardis, only magnified a hundredfold. The shockwaves of such a titanic displacement of water sent a heavy mist coiling into the sky a hundred feet high, and that same pressure was enough to buffet and rattle the dragon boat and its contents even as it sailed towards the epicenter of the Herculean spectacle from two miles distant. The river surface leading up to the rim of the waterfall was churned white as the Woe thrashed and roiled unchecked. No mere mortal could ever hope to survive an encounter with the raging essence of the All-mother.

  ‘We should probably turn aside. Or better yet pull ashore and take a bit of a stroll..’ shouted Jonn Grumble, his teeth chattering in time with the vibrations of the boat, his eyes fixed upon the great plume of dark mist looming before them.

  ‘We cannot turn aside, the river is too powerful!’ cried Isolde above the deafening sound of their impending destruction. Jonn Grumble turned to Sigourd, his voice flush with the desperate fear in his heart, ‘What’s the plan then, lad? There is a bleedin’ plan isn’t there?!’

  Sigourd was forced to fight harder than ever to keep the boat on course, to keep it from straying into the path of discordant notes that would see them smashed asunder. His brow was knitted with concentration as he wrestled with the oar which was slick with water and at several times threatened to snap apart under the intense pressure of the currents.

  Isolde was right, the river had grown so powerful that they now had no chance of berthing the boat on the banks of the river. They had little choice but to press on into the falls.

  And then it came to Sigourd, loud and clear in his mind like the secret song of the All-mother;

  ‘Through mist and spray God’s anvil looms, the currents speed to certain doom. Hold your line and set your eye, through danger’s veil you’re sure destined to fly...’

  The words of the boatman came to Sigourd unbidden, but in the context of their immediate peril they fit a madman’s logic . Sigourd realized that that riddle had been the true parting gift of the mysterious boatman. Hidden in their abstruse nature was the key to t
heir salvation.

  ‘We’re going through the falls,’ cried Sigourd above the din. ‘Hold firm!’

  ‘We’re what!?’ screeched Jonn Grumble as Sigourd threw his entire weight behind the oar, causing it to snap with a piercing rapport as the dragon boat lurched suddenly, slipping between the discordant notes of the river’s untamable currents.

  Now they were locked into the destructive symphony of the river and there was truly no turning aside. They sped ever faster toward the falls, the boat shuddering and bucking violently as they raced toward an inescapable doom.

  The pall of mist loomed ever closer, like a column of thick smoke, like a wall of water hundreds of feet across and soaring dizzyingly into the sky. It blotted out entirely what little light remained in the day, plunging the small craft and its occupants into darkness as they passed beneath its vast shadow. That column loomed over the little dragon boat like a Titan of old myth, its fist raised high to smash the intrepid travelers from existence. The mist was so thick it obscured from view almost entirely the rim of the great falls. Sigourd and his companions passed into that miasma totally blind to their surroundings.

  All was noise. Noise so profound it took on a density all its own. Here, at the very edge of the great falls, surrounded on all sides by impenetrable gloom and assailed by unimaginable levels of sound, the trio surrendered themselves to the fates.