In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  It was all slipping away before his very eyes.

  The creatures were unstoppable. They were cleaving through barricades and guardsmen alike with unremitting ferocity. The Baron could see them beyond the threshold of the throne room, driving down the central corridor toward him. It would only be a matter of minutes before they found their way into the throne room itself. And then Mortaron would be dead.

  The throne room was the most secure location in the palace. The heavy doors and thick walls meant that breaching the chamber would a nigh on impossible task to accomplish quickly. Consequently members of court, nobles, ministers and the like, as well as a gathering of the household staff had come straight here when the attack had begun. Here they all remained trapped like rats on a sinking ship.

  The last of the Baratiis were falling back through the great doors to form a protective ring around their liege lord.They where sworn to protect their baron and it was here that they would make a determined last stand. Even if it was their doom to die there, their limbs torn from their bodies and their faces slashed.

  Beyond the great doors, several of The Baron’s men were fighting to the death in an attempt to hold the monsters at bay. Their futile struggle was possessed of a desperate nobility. Warriors courageously holding the line in defense of their sworn duty. Mortaron couldn’t care less.

  ‘Seal the doors!’ he bellowed. Some of the Baratiis hesitated, for to seal the doors would be to trap their brethren out there with the horrors. Mortaron drew his side arm, an exquisitely crafted flint-lock pistol of polished brass and cherry wood, and with a flash bang he discharged the weapon into the chest of the sergeant at arms. In a puff of singed blood and tissue, the man was slapped from his feet to fall dead upon the floor.

  The remaining Baratiis within the throne room rushed to obey their lords command, two or three of them for each of the massive oak doors. They pulled with the desperation of men who were very possibly savoring their last moments in this life. Slowly, inexorably, the great doors began to move. They groaned and squealed in protestation as they began to swing closed.

  Suddenly, a massive armored figure loomed in the gap between those grinding doors. Interposing himself, Huron braced the doors open, heaving with every sinew beneath his skin, while pushing the Lady Veronique into the chamber through the meagre space.

  The knight slipped into the throne room just as the doors slammed shut with a resounding boom that echoed around the stone worked pillars of the old chamber. The sound lingered amongst the latticework of beams in the high roof like butterflies trapped in a glass bell.

  Soon there were so many dead soldiers choking the corridors that Bael and the others were sloshing through shallows of blood that had collected around their feet.

  Eventually, the architect of the destruction of not only his own community, but the city of Corrinth Vardis, caught a glimpse of the doors of the distant throne room, and the royalty that cowered beyond them. What members of the interior guard remained were falling back in disciplined order. They were withdrawing into the throne room, trying to seal the chamber. Standing ankle deep in the life blood of his fallen foes, Bael beat his chest and rent his hair in anger as those heavy oak doors, reinforced with a near impenetrable lattice of iron grille work, slammed shut, denying him for the moment his final prize.

  ‘You!’ boomed Mortaron, stepping from behind his cordon of Baratiis to stand before the bewildered Veronique, his finger pointing straight at the lady in stark accusation. His face was the deep red of one who was on the verge of losing control of himself entirely, ‘You have done this. You have brought this ruin down upon our heads!’

  Veronique was almost sanguine in her response, ‘We both have, brother. This is the sins of our past returned to visit a well earned doom upon us.’

  Was there even the hint of a smile playing over her lips as she spoke? Was there even a glimmer of light twinkling defiantly in her large dark eyes?

  Mortaron’s lips thinned to a pale slit in a face throbbing with rage. When he spoke again, his voice was a low hiss, and his eyes never left those of his sister, ‘Huron, the Lady Veronique is a traitor to the realm. She has brought these fell horrors to our lands and in the name of the law she must be put to death. Take this whore’s head from her shoulders.’

  Huron’s knuckles were white upon the haft of his war axe, but he did not move from his position beside Veronique. The Baron turned to his enforcer, rancid malevolence coming off his person in waves, ‘What are you waiting for you dull witted whoreson!? I have commanded you to execute this traitor!’

  Huron’s response was a quiet rumble, ‘I will not, Lord.’

  Slowly, The Barons expression turned as understanding came to him. A wry, knowing smile propped up the corners of his thin mouth, but the malevolence never left his eyes.

  ‘So, it appears that not even you are inured to love’s insipid caress,’ said The Baron to the nightmare knight. ‘How tragically predictable.’

  Without warning, The Baron drew his blade in a sudden flourish, he swept the sword up to bring it down across the neck of the startled Veronique, the glinting steel of his weapon catching the light of the candles scattered around the chamber. It glittered briefly, dazzlingly fast, but it never landed to draw the blood of its intended target.

  There was another flash as the war axe bit deep. It traveled through flesh and bone and chain mail as if they possessed the consistency of warm goose fat. Huron’s weapon passed clean through The Baron, cleaving into him at the shoulder and leaving his body at a point only slightly above the opposite hip.The Baron blinked once in surprise before the two halves of him fell away in an explosive decompression of blood. Bisected like a side of beef, the separate parts of Vincenzo Mortaron simply flopped upon the floor with the hard, wet slap of meat on stone.

  Veronique stood shivering, too stunned to frame a response. She looked down at the bloody remains of her late brother.

  He had fallen merely feet from the object of his secret and ultimately fatal compulsion. The throne of The Regent of Corrinth Vardis.

  Huron stepped closer to her, putting himself between the lady and the remaining Baratiis.

  ‘Forgive me, my lady. I could not allow him to harm you,’ said the knight, who now leveled his axe at the former Baron’s sworn guardians in case they were inclined toward a bit of quick vengeance for the brutal slaying of their lord.

  The knight and the gathering of Baratiis eyed each other wearily from behind their raised weapons. Huron was outnumbered six to one, but even such odds didn’t necessarily speak in favor of the soldiers of the 75th, a fact of which they were only too aware.

  But there would never be an opportunity to see first hand which course the struggle might have taken, for as both parties stood ready to deal further death, a cry went up from across the room.

  ‘Up there, they’re coming in!’

  Veronique looked to the source of the alarm, where several of the near two dozen cowering servants and minor royals were looking and pointing to the high ceiling in terror.

  Impossibly, the monsters had gained access to the throne room and were loping and swinging between the lattice work of thick beams with simian agility. They clung to the heavy war banners and ancient tapestries that hung from the beams, digging their talons into the thick fabric and using those to drop from the great arching roof. There were so many of them. Dozens.

  How had they found their way into the chamber? But of course, mused Veronique, the throne room was built to withstand attack from mortal men who would not possess the ability to scale walls and climb chimneys and clamber through roof vents. Mortal men who would not be able to drop from that roof with such terrible grace even if they had managed to climb so far in the first place. The wulfen fell upon the terrified onlookers and upon the heads of the remaining Baratiis, their screams rising to fill the chamber.

  Huron motioned to Veronique that she should stay behind him, pressing her back up the steps of the dais, his axe held out before him
like some holy relic to ward off demons.

  As one by one the remaining members of court, and the household staff and the surviving Baratiis fell silent to the rending claws and teeth of the wulfen, those demons turned their attention upon the towering Huron and the Lady Veronique, who sheltered behind him.

  There were close to thirty of the monsters in the chamber now. Their yellow eyes, pinned black, fixed hungrily on the last living humans in the chamber. Slowly, they began to advance.

  They boxed the pair in from all sides, forcing Huron to back pedal further up the steps of the dais. One of the wulfen pounced, clearing the ample space between himself and Veronique in a single bound. Before the snarling creature had even touched the ground, Huron’s war axe swung once more, singing through the air. A snarling, fanged head rolled free of its body.

  The remaining wulfen howled in rage at this, pressing ever closer to the object of their murderous desire. However, they approached the knight more cautiously now, weary of the undeniable threat he posed even outnumbered as he was.

  The next attack to come was more coordinated, as two of the wulfen lunged in. Huron’s reactions were almost preternaturally fast. He splintered the teeth of one of his attackers with the flat of his axe, sending the creature skidding across the floor, its jaw hanging loose. The other was able to clamp its fanged maw around Huron’s left forearm. Teeth as wicked sharp as an assassins dagger punched through the steel plate of the knight’s vambrace. Only the slightest hiss passed Huron’s lips through gritted teeth as he tried unsuccessfully to shake the beast loose. Changing tact, Huron jerked his arm up, causing the wulfen clamped there to expose itself to another decisive swing of the war axe.

  The lower half of the wulfen, from the center of the torso down, slumped to the cold stone floor amidst a wash of blood.

  The rest of the beast, from the base of the sternum up, hung limp and dead from that raised vambrace like a sack from a tree branch. Huron shook it free so that it too dropped to the floor with a wet thud.

  The gathered wulfen howled again, in dismay as much as rage at the fate of their brethren. Huron gripped his axe tighter, ready for the onslaught. The wulfen of the Eastern Fringes threw themselves at the nightmare knight.

  The war axe swung in great arching loops, cleaving heads and torsos and limbs as the knight stood his ground against the implacable foe there on the steps of the dais.

  Behind him, Veronique sank to her knees, her hands clasped in desperate prayer. She had already seen such horrors to wither the soul, and still she must continue to bear witness to the ongoing depravity.

  CHAPTER 22

  The bitter end...

  The steps around Huron’s feet ran wet with spilled blood, and the air seemed to be thick with it. It ran down the haft of his axe and covered his gauntlets. His hair was slick with the stuff. His face was a mask of red vitae and for all the gods he appeared a living avatar of death incarnate as he waded into the press of monstrous bodies around him, shouting his defiance into the faces of his enemies even as they pulled him down.

  The knight disappeared beneath the crowd of wulfen as of more and more of the pack dived upon him to tear and rend and feed. His shouting turned to screaming as they cracked the shell of his armor to reach the meat within. Soon enough he fell silent forever.

  Veronique knelt upon the cold stone of the dais, trapped and alone. Her face streaked with tears, she resigned herself to the fates. There, before the throne of her husband she prepared to meet whatever brutal end the gods had conspired to gift her. In the deepest places of her heart, she believed that it was an end well deserved.

  An end earned for all of her misdeeds. For her complicity in a lie that had spanned a lifetime. For the sacrifices she had allowed out of cowardice. For allowing her past to endanger and ultimately cost her son his life. Yes, she deserved this fate.

  The air was thick with the iron tang of spilled blood. Veronique could hardly breathe for gagging on it. She wondered momentarily if perhaps she was already dead, and had arrived in the pits of Hell to be surrounded forever by the rank odor of death and the stark horrors of her poor choices.

  One of the monsters rose from the pack surrounding the mutilated corpse of the knight Huron. He turned to regard Veronique with eyes as black and fathomless as an abyssal fault. Larger and more powerfully built than any of the monsters surrounding her, she recognized what must have undoubtedly been the alpha male. He padded slowly towards her, the sound of his clawed feet snick, snicking on the tiled floor of the throne room. The noise was strange to her not by dint of its nature, but by the fact she could hear such a small sound at all. She realized suddenly that silence had fallen over the chamber like a blanket. Now that the screams and the cries of mercy had died down, the monsters regarded Veronique quietly, attentively, as pack animals were want to do when seizing up a stranger in their midst.

  The approaching beast’s thick, dark fur was matted with filth and fresh blood. The cloying scent of his animal musk mixed with the abattoir stink that hung so heavy in the air, and Veronique was forced to press her hand to her mouth for fear she might heave right there before the Throne of The Regent.

  The monster padded closer still, coming right up beside her. It towered over Veronique now. Large even by the standards of the other beasts in the chamber, it stood easily a head taller than most men of the realm. A match indeed for the enforcer Huron were his entrails not spread all over the floor of the throne room.

  The beast crouched down, craning its long neck so that its maw was merely a hairs breadth from Veronique’s face. The creature sniffed the air about her. The gesture was almost one of curiosity, of intimate invasion.

  Veronique was trying so hard to stifle the shivering in her bones. She could barely breathe, so overpowering was the ripe stink of fresh death.

  Then there was the hate.Veronique had never possessed the sight as she knew some people believed themselves to be. It was said that her great grandmother on her fathers side was inclined to such extra sensory perception, and her wisdoms were highly prized. Indeed, Veronique herself didn’t place too much stock in tales of peoples connections with otherworldly forces that existed beyond the realm of rational thought. But she could feel the creature’s malevolent antipathy as surely as she could see it standing before her. That hate radiated off the beast in hot waves so thick it was like standing next to an open furnace.

  She lifted her head to meet the black gaze of the beast, and as if it had been waiting for her to look it in the eye, the dark, wet meat of the beast’s lips peeled back to reveal a serrated grin of pearlescent incisors. That snarling maw opened slowly, gooey ropes of saliva trailing between the tips of those flesh tearers, the creature yawning wide to invite Veronique to look upon her fate. She closed her eyes, a silent prayer of forgiveness upon her lips as the jagged rows of ivory daggers loomed large before her.

  From above, there was a sound like the storm riven sea crashing against a rocky shore, and an ear piercing shriek to herald Veronique’s salvation. She turned in alarm to see what new horror was presenting itself, and found herself gazing in wonderment at the sight that greeted her.

  The stained glass of the great mullioned window set high above the dais was raining upon the throne room. The colored debris fell in a deluge, like a rainbow shattered by the wrath of a storm seer, the resultant fragments falling in a torrent from the sky.

  What had caused the great window to give way with such implosive force was something from the dreams of the lost lunacy.

  A great wooden dragon, its vast wings outstretched and its snapping maw spread wide as that ear splitting shriek came again, dove through the aperture of the shattered window.

  The wulfen were just as shocked to witness this sight as Veronique. They stood transfixed as the dragon swept into the vast throne room, swooping just below the latticework of beams.

  Even the monstrous creature that crouched beside Veronique was given pause in the face of this mythic interruption. The man beast stood
up on its hind legs, rearing to its considerable full height to stare in astonishment as the dragon circled lower.

  There was movement from upon the dragon’s back, something that had been riding it as one might ride the white waters of the River Woe, leapt high as the flying beast swept by. It all happened so quickly. Veronique glimpsed fur as white as snow, a snarling mass of talons and teeth, it collided with bone jarring force into the the beast that towered over her.

  The two creatures thudded into the marble base of the dais and rolled apart grunting.

  The dragon dropped suddenly into the crowd of gathered wulfen, scattering them pell mell as it came down with the cacophony of splintering wood being dashed against the hard stone of the floor. The dragon’s great wings sheared off, spinning lifelessly away as its fanged head shattered at the point of impact, the terrible, deafening shrieking dying in its throat instantly.

  Isolde and Jonn Grumble clambered from the wreckage of the dragon boat, their weapons ready. Sighting Veronique, they rushed to her, both of them taking the stone steps to the dais in a few bounds that brought them to her side. Veronique looked upon them in bewilderment, but she was quick to recognize Isolde, her mouth moving to frame the question that her mind was struggling to process.

  ‘It is good to see you again m’lady,’ said Isolde, as she and Jonn Grumble turned their weapons toward the remaining wulfen. But their caution appeared for the time unnecessary. The beasts attention was held firmly by the encounter between the two beings on the dais. One of them a hulking brute, matted in shaggy dark fur dripping with the blood of dozens. The other was a creature the polar opposite. More slenderly formed, it was a man beast of purest white. Its fur seemed to shimmer in the light of the full moon that glowered into the throne room through the shattered window above the dais. As Veronique looked upon that White Wulf, a single word escaped her lips in a breathless whisper, ‘Sigourd.’